Aeon Entelechy Evangelion
by EarthScorpion
Summary: Dystopia. Utopia. Mankind's dabbling into the unknowable. But at the end of the world, as the beleaguered forces of humanity stand against uncounted horrors, what can one boy do? And that is not dead which can eternal lie... Rewrite of Aeon Natum Engel.  Book II in progress.
1. Prologue

_A's N: It should probably be noted that the Prologue is not the main vein of the story. If you dislike meaningful poetry, and hinting devoid of context, feel free to skip straight to Chapter 1, which begins the proper story. I won't be upset. Really. _

* * *

**Aeon Entelechy Evangelion**

**A Rewrite of Aeon Natum Engel**

**Prologue: The Words That Began the End of Everything**

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

_Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic  
Orders? And even if one were to suddenly  
take me to its heart, I would vanish into its  
stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but  
the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,  
and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains  
to destroy us. Every Angel is terror.  
And so I hold myself back and swallow the cry  
of a darkened sobbing. Ah, who then can  
we make use of? Not Angels: not men,  
and the resourceful creatures see clearly  
that we are not really at home  
in the interpreted world. Perhaps there remains  
some tree on a slope, that we can see  
again each day: there remains to us yesterday's street,  
and the thinned-out loyalty of a habit  
that liked us, and so stayed, and never departed.  
Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind full of space  
wears out our faces – whom would she not stay for,  
the longed-for, gentle, disappointing one, whom the solitary heart  
with difficulty stands before. Is she less heavy for lovers?  
Ah, they only hide their fate between themselves.  
Do you not know yet? Throw the emptiness out of your arms  
to add to the spaces we breathe; maybe the birds  
will feel the expansion of air, in more intimate flight._

_Yes, the Spring-times needed you deeply. Many a star  
must have been there for you so you might feel it. A wave  
lifted towards you out of the past, or, as you walked  
past an open window, a violin  
gave of itself. All this was their mission.  
But could you handle it? Were you not always,  
still, distracted by expectation, as if all you experienced,  
like a Beloved, came near to you? (Where could you contain her,  
with all the vast strange thoughts in you  
going in and out, and often staying the night.)  
But if you are yearning, then sing the lovers: for long  
their notorious feelings have not been immortal enough.  
__Those, you almost envied them, the forsaken, that you  
found as loving as those who were satisfied. Begin,  
always as new, the unattainable praising:  
think: the hero prolongs himself, even his falling  
was only a pretext for being, his latest rebirth.  
But lovers are taken back by exhausted Nature  
into herself, as if there were not the power  
to make them again. Have you remembered  
Gastara Stampa sufficiently yet, that any girl,  
whose lover has gone, might feel from that  
intenser example of love: 'Could I only become like her?'  
Should not these ancient sufferings be finally  
fruitful for us? Isn't it time that, loving,  
we freed ourselves from the beloved, and, trembling, endured  
as the arrow endures the bow, so as to be, in its flight,  
something more than itself? For staying is nowhere._

_Voices, voices. Hear then, my heart, as only  
saints have heard: so that the mighty call  
raised them from the earth: they, though, knelt on  
impossibly and paid no attention:  
such was their listening. Not that you could withstand  
God's voice: far from it. But listen to the breath,  
the unbroken message that creates itself from the silence.  
It rushes towards you now, from those youthfully dead.  
Whenever you entered, didn't their fate speak to you,  
quietly, in churches in Naples or Rome?  
Or else an inscription exaltedly impressed itself on you,  
as lately the tablet in Santa Maria Formosa.  
What do they will of me? That I should gently remove  
the semblance of injustice, that slightly, at times,  
hinders their spirits from a pure moving-on.  
It is truly strange to no longer inhabit the earth,  
to no longer practice customs barely acquired,  
not to give a meaning of human futurity  
to roses, and other expressly promising things:  
no longer to be what one was in endlessly anxious hands,  
and to set aside even one's own  
proper name like a broken plaything.  
Strange: not to go on wishing one's wishes. Strange  
to see all that was once in place, floating  
so loosely in space. And it's hard being dead,  
and full of retrieval, before one gradually feels  
a little eternity. Though the living  
all make the error of drawing too sharp a distinction.  
Angels (they say) would often not know whether  
they moved among living or dead. The eternal current  
sweeps all the ages, within it, through both the spheres,  
forever, and resounds above them in both._

_Finally they have no more need of us, the early-departed,  
weaned gently from earthly things, as one outgrows  
__the mother's mild breast. But we, needing  
such great secrets, for whom sadness is often  
the source of a blessed progress, could we exist without them?  
Is it a meaningless story how once, in the grieving for Linos,  
first music ventured to penetrate arid rigidity,  
so that, in startled space, which an almost godlike youth  
suddenly left forever, the emptiness first felt  
the quivering that now enraptures us, and comforts, and helps._

The First Duino Elegy  
Rainer Maria Rilke  
Translated from the German by A. S. Kline.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

A single red drop fell from the once snow-white ceiling, falling down, down, though an empty void, only to splat into the crimson ocean that lay below. The concentric circles ran outwards, a wave through the clotting ocean, only to hit the shores of this sea of death, and rebound off; an endlessly intricate pattern of interference. Destruction and creation in one.

The pale girl kneeling by the scarlet pool reached down, and with a pair of fingers, gently closed the eyelids, letting no emotions reach her face. Whatever she felt about this, to the outside world, she was a blank book. If there were words there, they could not be read. She adjusted the arglasses that perched precariously on her nose, perhaps a size too large, reading the data overlays that were still active in this pace, and tucked a dark brown lock of hair back behind an ear.

She took a step forwards, an echoing retort in the near silence of the hollow space. What else was audible; the swish of her clothing? The inconstant rain down from the profaned ceiling? Her breathing?

No. Not that.

The second footstep was muted; a wet splat. Further steps would leave an asymmetric trail on those bits of the ground which remained untouched by the massacre which had occurred.

Slowly, uncaring of the blood-drenched floor, but stepping around the drips that fell from the rounded ceiling, she made her way to the desk. Just as the droplets that rained down from the dome above left their own patterns of ripples, so did the sounds of her steps reverberate and echo in the chamber, setting up odd harmonics. The staccato pulses of the falls, the flowing beat of the interference of the footstep; they set up a rhythm that filled the empty space. All too soon, though, there was silence again; the silence not of the grave, for that is one of both decay and new beginnings, but of the void; hollow, empty, and meaningless in its immensity.

With a few simple hand gestures on the surface, the desk shifted; carefully applied pressure breaking unnoticeable seals, the memoform underneath flowing upwards like liquid mercury to form a shelf-like structure. A flash of light; a triggered ward, simply ignored by the pale girl. Not even the dignity of acknowledgement was given to the ineffectual wards that should have fried her; mind and soul. The second layer, of activated orbs, in shifting yellow, purple, and a strange hint that burned at the eye awoke. The semi-autonomous constructs were programmed to attack anything that activated their trigger condition.

They too were destroyed; their radiant light extinguished in her grasp.

The bound extranormal entities did not even get the chance to be destroyed. The pale girl, dark hair not even displaced, stuck one hand straight through the surface of the desk; a brief, unnatural radiance flaring before immediately being extinguished, as she withdrew the untouched limb. The arglasses flared red, lighting up her eyes, as the augmented reality systems warned off a collapse of the waveforms of the sorcerous binding procedures. The things that had been anchored here fled; taking their new found freedom, and leaving. They could feel _her_, and it scared them to depths that their alien minds had never before experienced.

It would have been better if she had smiled in satisfaction. She did not. There was not even the normal easing of tension from a job well done. She merely scanned her eyes to the contents of the desk revealed by her actions.

Books in neat plastic wraps, every page individually sealed, to allow them to still be read while preventing damage to the antiquated tomes. Media storage devices, both modern isolated units and more ancient ones. An old combat knife, dating back to the 2060s, the black paint intended to reduce its shine peeling off. An picture, neatly framed, of a man and a woman together, standing by a beach, the sky red with the setting sun. An album, sealed with a DNA lock. The artefacts of a life; the anatomy of a relationship.

Irrelevancies. The thing that should have been here was not here.

She reached out, and lifted the knife, straightening as she did. "I know that you're there," she said, her voice soft. "I knew that you would come here for it."

Another voice spoke, echoing in the empty room. "Naturally." The voice was similar, but not identical; the intonations and speech patterns were subtly different.

"It is not yours, you know. You should not be allowed to possess it."

The other voice let a hint of amusement creep into it. "Define possession."

"I had changed subjects."

"I know."

The dark-haired girl turned to stare at the ghost-like figure behind her, taking note of the bare feet that emerged from the bottom of the long garment, the blood smeared across the ground pooling around them. Two grey eyes stared from under a veil of white hair, crudely hacked to jaw length without much care or attention.

She was covered in blood. Drenched in it. Her hands were red up to the elbow, caked in gore, rivulets still dripping from the hands.

The dark-haired girl spoke. "That was tasteless." She paused. "There are more efficient ways to kill."

There was a one-shouldered shrug from the ghost-like girl. "It was not inefficient. Inelegant, perhaps. But aesthetic preferences are nothing to the universe, while efficiency is a well-defined term." A faint smile passed her lips. "Can you not say that you have not done the same?"

There was a pause. Then; "Perhaps."

"I do know, you know." A pair of hands were wiped against the overly-long garment, leaving the white hands somewhat cleaner, although still caked in dry blood. "They were not all human, you know."

A deep rumbling could be heard from outside.

"That phrase has two meanings. Were not all of the individuals in the group human, or were they, individually not fully human? Actually," she continued, without letting the other girl say anything, "both are applicable. And you knew that. How could you not have?"

The corners of the white-haired girl's mouth twisted up. "That was nicely done," she remarked. "It is astonishing," she added, "the similarities."

This was also given due thought. "I would not say it is astonishing."

"No, you would not. So." The girl brushed a stained lock of white hair behind an ear. "What will you do now? Try to kill me, perhaps?"

There was a shake of the head. "No," the other girl replied, face held impassive. "I would succeed in doing so, should I make the attempt. But I will not. Even though you deserve to die. You, of all people, deserve to die."

A subtle tension left the air. "I did not think that would be what you would do," the blood-drenched girl admitted. "Last time we were this close... that was not what you believed at the time."

"Do not consider that representative," said the other one, her face mask-like. "There were reasons for that; good ones."

"Was it necessary?" Something glittered in the back of the eyes of the white-haired girl, like a nova.

"No. Necessity is false." There was perhaps a hint of bitterness in the voice. "Nothing is necessary; everything is permitted."

"That is not what Hassan-i Sabbah said." She matched the bitterness of her counterpart equally with her own amusement.

"That is because he was incorrect. I have seen outside what others would call reality, out to the limits of what I could comprehend, and the statement "Nothing is true" is a counter-factual statement. If nothing, it is an absolute statement which includes itself in the list of impossible concepts."

"You attack it on the grounds of the fact that it is inherently self-contradictory?"

"Why not?"

The blood-drenched girl turned, and began to pace up and down, the slap of bare feet in coagulating blood echoing. "It is a valid target." She paused, one foot aloof, and pushed some unidentifiable scrap of flesh out the way. "But you speak of reality, and self-contradiction? Have you ever thought..."

"There is no need to explain that to me, especially not in such a transparent manner," the other girl answered tersely. "You have no idea of how many times we have had this conversation. I already know what you plan."

Grey eyes locked with greenish-yellow ones. "Really." It was not a question.

"Really."

"Well, you are..." she paused. "What would you have me call you now?"

"Do not call me 'you', for one," was the answer. "That is not who I am. Nor am I nothingness, some real part of an imaginary thing. But I am not unity; the imaginary part of an imaginary thing, either. Yes," she continued, "I do understand it. Perhaps no-one else did. But you were not aware of her, the second one. That was not what you would have wished for. And you have taken the third one, opposition, for yourself." She gave an identical one-shouldered shrug to that which the other girl had given not much earlier. "Call me Gilgamesh, then."

"Unusual name," remarked the other one.

"A name is an identifying tag, nothing more; an attempt to abbreviate an understanding of another person into a source for reference, which conveys impressions, rather than true knowledge."

A grin. "What would you say that the qualia of "Gilgamesh" is, then?"

"Quite. Even though it is not precise."

"Oh. Why so?"

"The proportions are wrong."

"And the gender."

The dark-haired girl stared back. "That is a lesser concern, as you know quite well," she chided.

"It does break the naming conventions," the other girl pointed out, making her way over to one of the other bodies, evidently searching for something to dry off her hands. "The obvious one would have been degenerate with the last, of course. If we are changing things, should I call him Pallas Athena, then, wise one?" There was a certain trace of sarcasm in the words.

"No. That is also deliberate. I am not who he was. And, anyway, it was not him who you should have called Pallas Athena."

Something could be heard from outside the cavernous office; some kind of voice, booming down from the heavens above. The noise was warped by its passage through the immense volume, channelled and funnelled in ways that made it hard to understand.

"You know what that is," said one of the two girls, their nearly identical voices indistinguishable in the noise.

"Yes," replied the other. "How could I not? I have been counting on it."

"It is time."

"Yes. It is time for Entelechy to begin."

* * *

~'/|\'~


	2. Chapter 1: A Harbinger

**Chapter 1**

**A Harbinger / But where the dead leaf fell**

**EVANGELION**

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

_If the thing did happen, then man must be prepared to accept notions of the cosmos, and of his own place in the seething vortex of time, whose merest mention is paralysing. He must, too, be placed on guard against a specific, lurking peril which, though it will never engulf the whole race, may impose monstrous and unguessable horrors upon certain venturesome members of it. _

– Excerpt from the first entry of the Peaslee Documents, written by Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee (a tragic victim of xenobiological-assisted Type-6 _Seelenversetzung_), in 1935. This version of the text was republished under the auspices of the New Earth Government, for the 150th anniversary of the discovery of the second known pre-human civilisation.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**August 19th, 2091 CE**

Below an ash-coloured sky, the sea lapped at the remnants of Old London. Those buildings which had survived the First Arcanotech War rose like macabre tombstones to those who had died under the Nazzadi bombardment, while between them, smothered by the devouring tide, were craters, burned into the ancient city by indiscriminate bombing from orbit and the lightning waves of mecha that had swept through the city, putting all to the sword. The flooded streets, grey channels between grey buildings, under a grey sky, seemed to tell a melancholy tale of the hubris of a city that had once considered itself centre of the universe. Once, Old London had sprawled over most of the south of England, a revocation of the anti-urbanisation laws of the twentieth century allowing a phase transition that had turned large amounts of the country into one massive metropolis.

Now, Old London was slowly being eaten by the rapacious appetite of its child; a mother devoured by her daughter, as old ruins were torn down and their rubble fed to the nanofactories of the newer arcologies. In the gaps left by this consumption, nature was reclaiming that which had, for a few years, almost negligible on the geographic timescale, been the domain of mankind. The deciduous growths that blossomed in such places had started off as natural regrowth, but in the last few years, a deliberate policy of environmental restoration had been implemented, to cover the scars of the many wars which had affected Earth in the twenty-first century. But even in this return to nature, the injuries poked through; some of the trees swayed and moved in ways not quite as they should have, and leaves displayed the hectic and prismatic shades indicative of arcanochromatic exposure. In between these areas of ruin and regrowth, a few areas of habitation could still be seen; the Enclaves of those who chose not to dwell in the areas around the arcologies and so were, perhaps ironically, subjected to increased scrutiny by the New Earth Government, and the military installations that formed the network that protected the civilian populace.

The first signs of trouble were the blasts which spawned vast columns of water from the surface of the fat, lazy Thames that flowed well above its historic banks, as a minefield unmade itself, to no effect. Through the mist that suddenly filled the air, a dark shape could be seen moving. The fog flowed aside, as if it were afraid to touch the figure that stood, towering over the remnants of the majority of the buildings. It was vaguely ape-like at a glance; almost excessively anthropic in its shape by the standards of the other beings that mankind had encountered. But when observed more closely, that resemblance vanished. It was a night-dark hole in the world, in which objects spun and floated; strange bone-like arcs that shifted and flowed as they stayed perfectly still. Towards the top of its form, there was something akin to a white mask with a hooked beak which looked vaguely like a plague doctor, if the plague it was trying to remedy had infected an entire ecosystem. All across its form visceral organic protrusions jutted from its void-like skin. But all this was diminished by the thing that hung in the middle of its chest; if the creature was the night-sky, then the crimson orb that nestled in a bony grip was a dying sun, illuminating the landscape around it with its fell radiance.

A herald of strange aeons. A harbinger of that which was to come.

It was here.

It was time.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Stretching his shoulders, while still trying to maintain his somewhat precarious grip on the heavy bag held in both hands, Shinji Ikari attempted to work out the kinks in his neck, while looking around for some kind of trolley. Gazing at the empty stalls, it looked like he'd have to wait until they bought some more around. So, in an immaculate display of logic, Shinji was of the opinion that he might as well sit down. The bag became a perfectly valid improvised seat, and it was only when the crunch occurred that he remembered that there were some potentially breakable things in there.

With a groan, he let his head fall into both waiting hands.

"Welcome to the Victoria Arcology and London-2," announced a male voice. "We hope you have a pleasant and peaceful stay here. Transport may be obtained to other surface arcologies, and to the remainder of the city. All individuals are reminded that they should have their passports ready, and the linked HC-82 forms filled out in full. If you have not done so, your biometric profile may not be linked from your region of origin, and you may be subjected to extra analysis upon arrival. If you see any unattended baggage, or individuals acting in a suspicious manner, please report them to the nearest member of Arcology Security. Remember; this security is here for your own safety."

Well, at least he was past that hassle. The genetic scan had confirmed he was who he claimed he was; one sixteen-year old boy, dark-brown hair, perhaps a little shorter than average for his age, no real distinguishing figures, one-hundred percent _Homo sapiens sapiens_.

With a sigh, he gave up, and slumped back down again, this time on the cold floor. He could have sworn that he hadn't put anything breakable in the hand-luggage, precisely for that reason. Another, somewhat self-consciously melodramatic sigh bought an end to that chain of thought, and he fished in a pocket for his Personal CPU. Glancing up, he could see that they still hadn't bought any trolleys. A girl with dark brown hair was standing by the racks, presumably waiting for the same thing, and she would get to them first. His eyes lingered on her for a moment, dipping, before rising... yes, she was rather cute. She caught his glance and held it without hostility or benevolence, until a bleep from his device drew his attention.

_I should probably move, come to think of it_, he thought, glancing down at the screen, as the device booted from internal memory. Yet another thing to do once he was clear of the airport; wait for the auto-update for the local arcology protocols, so that he wasn't stuck on internal memory. Which sucked. How were you supposed to cope without access to PanArcology Network or the Grid? Even his muse was shut down because of the lack of processing power; nothing more than a heuristically-derived list of saved and extrapolated preferences, rather than a proper Limited Artificial Intelligence.

Shinji glanced up. At least the girl didn't seem to be waiting by the trolley rack any more. Of course, that most probably indicated that she'd got one of the returned ones first, and he had missed it. Either way, it would make sense to lug the bag over to that place, and wait.

Seated in his new position, he opened up the local copy of the message that had caused all these problems. It was so simple. A message from his father; the instruction "Come" the only text in between the automatic filled-in header and footer. If there had been any more text, the censors had caught it all.

"I have no idea why I did," he said, barely vocalising the words, as he shook his head. He glanced at his watch. Twenty-five past twelve. He should already be waiting for the woman who had sent the second email, explaining how she would be picking him up. He groaned. He really was behind, and didn't want to leave... he checked the name... Major Misato Katsuragi waiting. That meant that he had to carry the bag. Luckily, he had a picture of her, at least.

It was very much a demonstrative picture. Many people would have just resorted to sending a picture of their face. Not this Major Katsuragi, apparently. No, she was apparently so diligent that she wanted him to be able to recognise her even if he couldn't see her face, and so had sent a picture which exposed considerable more flesh than would be normal. And an annotation which had practically been an instruction to look at her breasts. Add that to the fact that the picture had apparently been taken in Nazza-Duhni, in what had once been Cuba before the territory had been given to the Nazzadi in the aftermath of the First Arcanotech War, and which had been declared the world's first "clothing-optional" city, and it might be deduced that the boy had "appreciated" the photograph. Technically, the skimpy bikini that the woman was wearing fulfilled the criteria for not being naked. Most of the individuals in the background were not so clad.

Blearily, he rubbed one hand against an eye, and glanced to his right. _I might was well just go._ He still wasn't really wasn't feeling that well, quite beyond the jet lag; he was still getting over the airsickness which afflicted him whenever he flew; a fun little gift from the genetics fairy, who was, by most reckonings, a capricious bitch. And that was even before the meeting, which he loathed the idea of, but which filled his foreseeable future like an iceberg looming from the mists, was taken into account. It was still possible that it might go well, of course... it wasn't as if his father had given any explanation for why he had to attend. Perhaps it was an attempt at reconciliation. But that wasn't likely, was it? Was it? He didn't know, and the unknowing nagged at him, even through the tiredness.

Shinji Ikari felt that he had a rather good reason to be feeling nervous and sick, all in all.

He had no idea.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Today, at 12:27 pm, a special state of authority has been declared by the New Earth Government. All citizens in the surface levels of the Victoria Arcology are to head immediate to the closest designated secure bunker. Access to surface levels in London-2 is forbidden. All citizens who fail to obey these instructions risk personal injury including a-chem exposure, or death, and may be dealt with as threats to internal security. Temporary martial law is in full effect."

"_Asisi radisi, ni plancki solilaki-twi pla twilaki-reski, soli Newi Earthi Governmenti canalabi absul homisapi. Absul homisapi ni absul piwuteri oi Arkologi oi Victoria serakausi mandatuchanposakausi sulucerpos velecuscipubuyuteri. Absul ui opuvami ot piwuteri oi arkologusufiki Londoni-twi. Absul homisapi whiku opuvulakausi peruginozakausi, pla arkanokemiki, altna perutermakausi, pla peruserakausi constresi. Vuli-oi-gurilutermi, delo estru radisi, serabi canalabi._"

"Today, at 12:27 pm, a special state of authority has been declared by the New Earth Government. All citizens in the surface levels..."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The serried ranks of armoured vehicles and static defences were dug deep into the fortified positions which surrounded the civilian targets. The mainstay armoured units of the New Earth Government Army, the Type-M055 and Type-M057 main battle tanks presented a bristling front of railguns, relativistic charged particle beams, and lasers. The hovertanks, tactically more akin to gunships than anything bound close to the ground, were landed, positioned hull-down against what might come. Interspersed were tracked tank-destroyers, bringing the massive firepower of the charge beam on the Type-H045 and the arcanomagnetically-confined directed-plasma weapon on the Type-H047 to the field. From all over the surrounding area, missile systems prepared to fill the clouded skies with a rain of smart projectiles, covered by a defensive umbrella of anti-air-and-missile systems. The anvils and the hammers of the armoured forces of the New Earth Government were ready.

Beside them, in underground hold-outs, for use in counter-attack, were the lances. The conventional mecha of the NEG were angular things; much more organic in their shape compared to the brutalist aesthetics of the armoured forces, and painted in the same urban camouflage as the armoured vehicles. The designs were not, technically speaking, terrestrial human in origin; to be exact, almost all the mecha in the army's arsenal came from the basic designs of _Homo sapiens nazzadi_, the black-pigmented, red-eyed cousins of humanity, made by the alien Migou to subjugate the Earth. And accompanying them, were their superiors; the Engels. Arcanocyberxenobiological war machines, altered and played with by the hand of mankind; improved, armoured, armed, lobotomised, and piloted by cybernetically modified pilots that dwelt in uterine capsules within the guts of the thing. They had been one of the great triumphs of the last decade; tougher, faster, and stronger than normal mecha, able to regenerate their unnatural flesh, and despite the problems that the first few steps into this field of technology had suffered, the establishment of the Engel Group had solved them, to produce _things_ from the monsters that mankind encountered.

In the skies, were the naval and aerial forces. Flocks of gunships, distinguishable from the hovertanks only really in the orientation of their turrets, hung low. Above the clouds, the aircraft waited, holding position until they had authorisation to fire. And the cigar-shaped bulks of the capital ships waited, lifting off from their armoured docking points.

Such defence was necessary. There were twenty million people in London-2. That was half a percent of the global population. It was estimated that it would take a massive Migou deployment, on a scale never-before-seen, to break them; and such risk taking was not a characteristic of the Yuggothian fungoids which had controlled orbit, ever since the start of the Second Arcanotech War. And as for the cults, the fish-fuckers of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, or the ravening worshippers of the Unnameable One, the King in Yellow, who sat on his throne in Tibet-that-is-Leng; they didn't stand a chance. The New Earth Government was not about to make the same mistake again.

What they did not have was a target. And as the minutes ticked by, the military was getting more and more worried. They'd picked up the Pattern Blue of a massively altered r-state. But they couldn't find it.

And that was a matter of _some_ concern.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Major Katsuragi, you have a phone call from... Dr Ritsuko Akagi, Director of Research at the Ashcroft Founda..."

"Yes, yes," snapped the black-haired woman, pulling a terminally unsafe turn that took her car far closer to the edge of the building than the designers would have ever wished. "Just put her through," she instructed the muse. The inside of her car was noticeable in that it neglected such things as leather seats and a stylish dashboard for things somewhat more essential for those subjected to the quirks of its pilot. Like high-quality advanced control systems, and military-grade crash seats. And things that wouldn't break when subjected to sustained multiple-g accelerations.

In the opinion of the driver, speed had a style all of its own.

"Where are you, Misato?" asked an equally frustrated voice. "We're under attack!"

"I know! They're locking down the city; do you have any idea of how long it took me to," she yanked at the control throttles, narrowly pulling her way _through_ the gap between a pair of buildings, "... damn it. Engage autopilot, to set destination," she told her muse, flipping a switch on the dashboard, and then leant back. "... yeah. I got really delayed by the checkpoints at the Geocity exit. They didn't even accept my Advisor status until I shouted at them for a bit," she added, with a hint of a pout.

"Yes! And Harbinger-03 has shown up! We need you back in Command, so you can manage the operation," the woman told the Operations Manager.

"Yeah, well..." She paused, leaving the statement hanging. "I've already directed an ArcSec squad to secure him, so I can pick him up," she added. "I'm not stupid."

You could hear the other woman's nod. "Good. Well, get back soon. The army don't seem to be doing, well, well..." There was a sigh. "Don't crash the car because I told you to hurry, either," she said somewhat drily.

"Not likely." Misato paused, a smirk on her face. "I wouldn't want to give you the satisfaction of being right. End call."

With a flick of a switch, the autopilot was disengaged, and the car once again returned to its default behaviour, as it violated four major, and twelve minor traffic laws with the steep ascent.

_Damn it, damn it, damn it! Why did it have to be _today_, of all days! Why did _that _thing have to show up now!_, she silently bemoaned.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

At the sound of the sirens, and the dual warnings in both Reformed English and the Nazzadi tongue, the dark-haired boy froze, listening to the message. This was not good. This was really not good. The airport was at the peak of the pyramidal arcology, and if they were calling a full evacuation to the sub-ground levels... well, if this place was structured like Tokyo-3, and it looked to be... he really didn't know where on earth he was meant to be going.

Slowly, he swallowed, and controlled his breathing. He wasn't going to panic. You didn't panic in this kind of situation, because mob hysteria could be infectious, and potentially fatal if there were hostile Extra-Normal Entities around.

Then common sense reasserted itself, and he scanned the walls, finding the inevitable displays active, which were guiding the travellers to the evacuation routes. At least he wasn't going to be left standing here, alone in a strange city, while... whatever was happening - they'd been overly vague about it, in his opinion - happened. That would have been really quite bad.

The high, well-lit corridors were no longer so bright; armoured plating rolling down to obscure the windows as the city went into battle mode, locking into place before the rattle of more could be heard through the first layer. The noise of footsteps was a dull roar, as people swarmed in the directions instructed, the calls of the security staff in the illuminated overalls guiding the evacuating horde.

Figures in the trim blue and white light combat armour of Arcology Security, the branch of the police with jurisdiction over local events, were patrolling the lines, rifles in hand and the illumination of the smartlink in their helmets visible on the transparent faceplates of their helmets. They were looking for something, it seemed; well, that was logical, Shinji thought. With this kind of evacuation, it was obvious that there had been some kind of threat, although whether Migou or cult-led in origin, that was unclear. Perhaps if he just asked...

And that was when the terrible noise, audible even through the sealed arcology walls, the very ground shaking in a way which showed that it had ceased to be noise and started to be seismic activity started; a cacophony of chaotic collisions calling to the cold cosmos and causing cries of concern among the cosmopolitan crowd. The boy gasped, and covered both ears with his hands; he could feel his jaw ache and bones throb with each pulse, and they came near constantly.

The evacuation turned into panic. The queues, no longer a line but now a mob, broke, despite the efforts of the airport staff and the ArcSec officers. The rational urges were gone, washed away by the ape brain, which just demanded that they _get away from the noise_. Baggage was discarded to be trampled underfoot and snarl other people, often then to be stamped on by their fellow men.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The long wait of the military was broken by sudden, immense violence. Violence of a nature quite beyond anything they could have committed.

The first positive confirmation they had of hostile action was when the first line was hit by an opaque wave. It was even a wave of fluid. What it was not, was a wave of water. It was a terrible black thing; a delineated night's sky shot through with dying red stars that cast their vile radiance over the area, and ossuarous structures painted on the surface which somehow seemed to be immersed in the inky void.

Take the air, take the ground, take concrete buildings and broken glass and tarmac and all the legacies of human innovation and hubris, take even the precious laws of physics which generations had worked to deduce... and render them as nought before something much greater than them. Individually compared to that which they faced, they were nothing.

Perhaps, unified, they could do something.

Perhaps the entity which was the intellect behind the wave found that idea amusing.

One of the most interesting phenomena accurately predicted by quantum theory, the outmoded schema for describing reality which had been replaced by arcane theory in the same way that relativity had replaced Newtonian dynamics, was a legacy of the indistinguishablity of particles. Specifically, under the statistical mechanical model, the assumption that the number of particles in a non-relativistic bosonic gas was constant turned out to create a minimum temperature above that of the defined absolute zero. The root of this was a flawed assumption in the base model; as the temperature of the system fell, the assumption that there are no particles in the ground state was rendered invalid. Instead, the equations had to be adjusted to account for the fact that there was, in fact, a macroscopic number of bosons where ε = 0, and so they had to be counted separately, rather than ignored in the integral. And when they had a macroscopic number, they imparted some exceedingly odd properties to the system, indeed. The particles in the ground state carried no energy, and did not move; a consequence of their stationary wavefunction. No internal energy, no pressure, no viscosity. They did not even increase in pressure when compressed, to name but one of their oddities.

Now, imagine the consequences of a macroscopic, non-uniform system degenerating into that state.

Such a thing was impossible, of course. Apart from the fact that the theory had modelled a gas, not a solid, and had even required heavy modification to be able to handle helium-4, which was a superfluid, matter was not purely bosonic. Electrons were fermions, with a half-integer spin as were any species composed of an odd number of fermions. And that was not even to get started on the odder phenomena that arcane theory had discovered could exist in altered r-states; yions, Clark-Davenport coalescence... the list was packed with complex phenomena tagged with the names of early twenty-first physicists. It would require a massive violation not only of the classical and quantum models of reality, but also of what humanity knew of the arcane, too, for such a thing to be. It was flagrantly impossible.

Quite.

And a little ironically, the wide-area spread, the grand symbolism, the callous disregard for this planet, was eminently unnecessary. There was nothing special about humanity or their vehicles, after all, and the human body was merely the sum of its components; a macroscopic assemblage of electrons and protons and neutrons, ordered and structured in predictable 1-state configurations. Nothing special. Far less would have been needed to disrupt the squishy organic matrices of dirty water with which they mimicked sapience. A relatively small tweak in the vacuum permittivity, perhaps, such that their component electrons were no longer bound quite as strongly, and the resultant homeostatic breakdown of such a sensitive system would have been quite adequate. Not this, not this sudden constriction of every component fermion and boson into their groundstate, even while their energies remained the same. It was a gratuitous, flashy display that left reality screaming from the violation.

Two brigades had been stationed in the area the wave had covered, ready to hold off the barely detected threat.

They died quickly and painlessly.

And then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the wave of impossibility coalesced into a discrete, shaped form; the black giant, with the sun on its chest, staring forth over the forces arrayed against it. But was that mask its face? Why should such a thing be assumed, for such an alien beast? Reality screamed at its return to this shape; white noise and white light flooding the spectra from a crystalline, fractured radiance which briefly flared over it.

And what had it done to those people? It was not indescribable. It was not even that horrible to look at; the waveforms collapsing back into discrete particles, leaving a fused mess of carbon and silicon and metal and gases and trace elements, while above the air crackled with static electricity as the atmosphere through which it had passed reformed. The violation of reality was retained; the release of energy which should have resulted from so many bond formations did not occur, as the r-state snapped back down; impossibility negating impossibility. The horror came from the knowledge of what had been there before, across those fifteen square kilometres, reaching far down into the earth, in that expanse that had flowed to a terrible flat plane.

And that was horrific indeed.

The crack of laser-superheated air, particle beams, and hypersonic shells filled the air, as the survivors opened fire, the targeting LAIs trying as best within their dumb parameters to maintain order and standard firing protocols, but the monster had cut the heart out of the morale of too many of the defenders. The morale, and the sanity. Humanity was a flawed species, whether human, Nazzadi, _amlati_ or _sidoci_. Their neural architecture was a product of an evolution which had selected for survival in a low r-state, to enable the foremost ape to grab the fruit, with less-than-stellar adaptations to deal with the far-too-few generations of civilisation, and the even-fewer of knowledge of the arcane.

Against such a thing, that shaped itself for survival in an impersonal universe, and was as a god to them... was it any surprise that tank crews and mecha jockeys alike broke and panicked?

Nevertheless, the target was enveloped in fire, bracketed and isolated, as incredible yields slammed into it. The tanks and mecha, emerging from their shelters, might as well merely have been providing illumination. Stellar-bright plasma beams made a slight indentation on the surface of the thing, swallowed up by the void of its body. The missiles were as rain to it, bursting like cherry blossoms in spring to produce an obfuscating veil. The attempts to take out its legs were entirely futile; it either massed implausibly much, or the momentum of a little something like a relativistic particle beam was entirely irrelevant to it.

And always, the sick, crystalline, fractured light, radiating forth and casting the clouds in stark contrast, that shimmered like a broken diamond around its skin.

The night-dark shape chose to ignore the petty fire of the insects that surrounded it, striding onwards, and raised one hand. The red sun that burned on its chest flared briefly, and the air screamed. The line of distortion traced from its palm and lamprey-like fingers, to slice up through a _Skuld_-class frigate. A heartbeat, then the two halves of the ship fell out of the air, separating as they did, rolling and crushing a company beneath them. Even the blue afterglow of its passage that burned into the retina was mute, compared to the suns being thrown against the monster.

A flash of light, and the figure jerked backwards as it was wrapped in a fireball, which swallowed the beast whole. As the sudden light rushed outwards, the entity could be seen as a dark figure in the middle of the blossom of flame, long ape-like arms trailing on the ground behind it, torso bent at an impossible angle such that its shoulders almost touched the floor rear of its feet. The blue-green trail of the nitrogen ionised by the relativistic particle beam which had just smashed into the head of the thing, fired by a stationary anti-capital defence, was barely visible. The afterglow was blanked out, as the _Pachendale_, the quadruple battery of near-ultraviolet capital grade lasers, began to slice into the darkness, frying the atmosphere around them with inhumanly precise targeting. Spewing lesser weapons from its surface arcs to reinforce the cutting beam, the bulk of the battleship rose above the armoured cradle in which it had been stationed. Rivulets of liquefied flesh poured off the night-thing as the lasers jumped back and forth across its surface, dodging the radiance which gathered in places which it lingered too long.

A hand was raised, as the torso of the monster snapped back upright, interposing itself into the path of the laser. And space-itself seemed to bend, so that no matter where it was directed, the propagation of the wave inevitably led in into the barrier. A second hand pointed at the _Pachendale_.

The _Invictus_-class battleship failed to live up to its name, and fell apart just as easily as the lesser frigate, its greater bulk only giving a scant second of extra life as the titan sliced through the major nodes in its distributed grid, leaving it to crash to the ground.

The monster continued its path, not even pausing as it eliminated the anti-capital charge beam which had knocked it back, drawing ever closer to the arcology cluster which made up the bulk of the city.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The command centre was surprisingly bare for a place of such importance; a low room, the armoured walls heavily buttressed, buried deep into the earth. It was a hub, not a processing centre; data was fed here from the Tactical Information Total Analysis Networks, for strategic decisions, rather than rely on a single centre. For those wearing arglasses or with the harcontacts or synthetic Eyes of the modern military, though, the place was aflame with Augmented Reality displays; the images as potentially solid and sharp as anything real. There was the purposed babble of ordered informational relay, as both people and the LAIs; a babble in which notes of frustration, horror and concern could be heard.

"We're getting feed from THEMIS," reported a male Nazzadi, his hands flowing through images that only he could see on the display screens that made up the surface of his eye. "We report; the _Pachendale_ has been destroyed. Hit from unknown weapon directly to D-Engine-1, then zero point three seconds later to D-Engine-2, then zero point oh seven second later to Primary A-Pod cluster. Telemetry indicates that autoshutdown was successful... we do not have a Horizon Event, I repeat, we do not have a Horizon Event."

That at least was some small mercy. Far too small.

"Damage mechanism unknown," added a woman on the other side. "Non-negligible r-state flux, though..." and she paused, "I can't say how much. It's faster than the resolution of the Shaws."

"What the hell does that mean?" snapped Field Marshal Lehy, red eyes aflame under her tightly tied iron-grey bun.

"Uh... well, basically," the junior officer paused, and decided that now was exactly the time for both honesty and profanity, "... we don't know what it's doing when it does the..." she waved her hands, looking for the right words, "...the arm-blasts, but when it's doing it, it's fucking up spacetime. And it's doing it faster than the sensors can respond to the changes, so we can't even see what it's doing. Um, well, not see, but detect."

The Field Marshal frowned, wrinkles settling into familiar patterns. It was almost ironic, she felt. The hostile had still caused less damage to the city than she, who had once been a young, fanatical junior officer in the Nazzadi invasion fleet, back before they had found out the truth and turned on their Yuggothian masters. It was not amusing, because what she had done had been monstrous, but she could at least see the potential for it to be at least drily humorous.

"We have a positive classification! I repeat, we have a positive classification! Target is exhibiting behaviours characteristic of a Herald-class entity; specifically, one in the Harbinger sub-category. We're trying to narrow it down!" announced a worried-looking man, clad in the uniform of an agent of the Global Intelligence Agency. "We recommend that you pull back all mobile forces, and prepare for a counter-attack, once we have a ID for the entity."

There was a crack as Field Marshal Jameson slammed the side of his balled fist into the table, a winced shake of the hand the only clue that, in retrospect, he could have chosen something softer. "Damn it!" he shouted, blue eyes staring angrily from behind lit arglasses. "Why aren't they doing anything!"

Beside him, Admiral Tatuta pointed angrily at the central screen, to the autocensored image of the leviathan. "Look at it. It just took a _harangi_ capital-grade charge beam to the face, and it didn't even dent the mask-thing!" snarled the male Nazzadi, unconsciously parting his lips in a not-at-all-friendly smile. "That would have left a Swarm Ship crippled if not _dead_! We should pull back, disengage; the GIA are right. Just throwing away men and ships like this is useless!"

Field Marshal Lehy groaned. Admiral Tatuta was right, loathe though she was to admit it; he was another one of the younger, ambitious Nazzadi, to whom AW1 was a childhood memory, like Field Marshal Kora. It was only fortunate for her own sanity that the other _nazzada_ was away, on the Eastern Front against the Migou forces coming in from fallen Russia. But right here, and right now, they really did need to pull back.

Out loud, she said, "I'm ordering the mass dispersal of scrubbers." She paused. "Does anyone want to countermand that?" There was a hint of challenge in her voice.

"Scrubbers?" The Admiral paused. "You're going to..."

"This close to a population centre, yes."

Field Marshal Jameson nodded. "Yes. Do it."

"It's the only way," she said.

Almost unconsciously, she glanced to the back of the room. A man sat there, the light reflecting off his orange arglasses, his mouth obscured by his interlocked fingers, arms propped up by the sides of the chair. There was a feeling of stillness around him, even in the packed command centre; others avoided the man, bar the grey-haired figure that stood beside him.

He was waiting, she just knew it. Sitting in a little patch of silence which almost sucked at the noise.

Waiting for his time.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Shinji Ikari lay face down on the floor, hands clamped over his ears, groaning. Weighed down by the heavy bag, he just hadn't been able to keep upright when pushed from all sides by the seething mass of humanity, as the mob turned from panic to terror. In retrospect, it probably hadn't been the best of ideas to put the strap over his shoulders, even if it left both hands free. The anchor which had weighed him down was, as he raised his head, lying on the floor, strap broken, quite clearly utterly trampled; even more so than he was. And that said something.

He could _feel_ the massive bruise which was going to make sitting down an exceptionally uncomfortable experience for the next week or so.

Outside, the noise was dying down, much more sporadic, and it was discretely noise now; not some omnipresent white wall of sound with physical force.

_Unless I've gone deaf_, he thought, propping himself up on his elbows with an not-inconsiderable amount of bleariness. Getting up seemed to be an improbable amount of effort, but he just about managed it, with aid from the remnants of his bag, levering himself into a sitting, and then a sort of crouched vertical position. Making his way over to one of the seats, he slumped back down, ignoring the nagging voice which told him that it was just going to make things harder when he actually had to move again, and fished in his back pocket... his back pocket.

Ah.

Yes. The back pocket. Where he had put his PCPU. Which the almost-certainly foot shaped bruise lay under.

With an almost comical flopping motion, the device swung on the hinge of the plastic covering he'd been keeping it in, slick with the fluid welling out of the broken screen. The actual device was snapped clean in two.

_Why didn't I listen to Yuki,_ ran his distracted chain of thought. _She said that I should get a soft-form one; that a hard one would only get broken. But, no, I wanted the increased internal processing power, and better screen resolution._

_If I ever see her or Gany again, I'll have to apologise._

Shinji took several deep breaths, swallowing down the up-swelling of bile, and wiped his suddenly sweat-slick brow, aware of a sudden chill. The damn announcement was playing in the background,

"_... sulucerpos velecuscipubuyuteri. Absul ui opuvami ot piwuteri oi arkologusufiki Londoni-twi. Absul homisapi..._"

and he didn't... well he did know a little first aid, because Gany had insisted that he learn some, but not much, and he didn't have any equipment and he didn't know what exactly he could do to deal with bruises and he wasn't sure how to deal with broken bones and the warnings were still playing and he wasn't perfectly awake and he didn't want to make things worse by fumbling when they should have a professional. So that made it okay to leave these people here, above ground, when those warnings were playing, and that noise was outside, didn't it? He wasn't a coward. This made perfect sense.

The next impact tore through the wall behind him, punching through the exterior armoured arcology barrier, and the reinforced interior wall like tissue paper. The air was filled with dust, the impact excreta enough to overcome the slightly higher pressure of the air in the interior of the structure; hot and choking compared to the pleasant air of the interior. A harsh, almost painful red light shone through the gap, casting the hallway in a dream-like glimmer that seemed to co-exist only uneasily with the pre-existing lights.

The boy's mouth fell open at the sight of the... it was a foot, wasn't it. A foot. A foot of something that just stepped through the arcology wall. His head swum, and he gagged, the rapid passage of breaths producing a sort of screaming whimper. The cold floor impacted with his behind, the pain of the impact negligible compared to the mental trauma running through his head, and he scrabbled furiously back, ignoring the discarded baggage in the furious, atavistic, instinctual flight from that which he could see. Higher thought shut down almost entirely, he merely blindly fled, legs flailing. Anything to get away from that harbinger of fell tidings, of which he had barely caught a glimpse.

The foe knew nothing of this. Soon the foot disappeared, tearing up the wall further, as it climbed further up the pyramidal structure. Matter degenerated under its footsteps, and one long simian arm reached down, scooping up an insect-like automated emplaced weapon, which buzzed wasp-missiles at it. A casual flick of an arm sent it spinning through the air, arcing, only to slam into the ventral laser of a frigate, the point defence entirely useless against an object with that mass and momentum. The ship lurched, the orange blossoms of ammunition explosions calling forth their own counterpart from within the ship. Uncaring, it strode on, crushing the peak, and began its decent down the other side.

Meanwhile, down in the Victoria Arcology, Shinji Ikari's flight from the monstrosity only ceased when he slipped over, foot moving under him on a wet patch on the floor. No longer able to maintain purchase on the ground, he slid straight into a wall, bouncing off onto his back. As he lay on the floor once again, for the... how many times in a very short while, he wasn't really sure, he could feel the hot, running feeling of blood welling up inside his noise, and the iron-taste on his tongue.

_What... what... what?_ his stunned thoughts ran. _What? What was... that _thing_! Why did it exist! It shouldn't!_ Rolling onto his side, hugging his knees close in a foetal ball, he sobbed, deep gasping breaths that wracked his lungs and pained his chest.

Slowly, he opened his eyes, as his breathing slowed. The remnants of a discarded drink, bright blue stickiness smeared across the smooth floor, explained the fall. Licking his lips unconsciously, all he could taste was the blood running from his nose. A rummage through his pockets revealed nothing of use. After a pause, he pulled off the jumper, folding it up, and wiping at his face, clamping the folded fabric to his nose to soak up the blood-flow.

Sitting up, Shinji Ikari, aching even more, looked for the nearest evacuation sign. He really had to get to safety, he was _sure_ of it, now, through the haze of adrenaline and fear. The boy broke into a stumbling jog, despite the flow of blood from his nose.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The smart blue and white body armour worn by ArcSec officers, although lighter than that which was used by the military for frontline duties, was still exceptionally tough. The advent of the nanofactory had made diamond, which was, after all, nothing more than an allotrope of 1-state carbon, an element not known for its rarity, as cheap as glass. The composite material that made up the majority of the plates was basically immune to pistol-calibre bullets; momentum transfer was still enough that the wearer might be put out of action, but the fatality rate was much decreased.

The female Nazzadi officer, red blood gushing from where the knife had been thrust through the neck seal, and worked until it had hit her jugular, was proof that the figures in blue and white were by no means invincible.

The stun baton that came down in a smart arc upon the head of her assailant was swung with more force that was strictly necessary, and as even as the woman with the knife stumbled back, collapsing under her own weight, the second blow made a sick crack which echoed through the suddenly silenced crowd.

And the whole mood suddenly changed.

Perhaps it was just a desire to maintain control, to prevent more people being crushed, and further assaults upon officers. Perhaps it was more malevolent. Either way, one cluster of ArcSec officers, three levels below where Shinji Ikari's current location, were a little overly heavy with their stun batons...and the mob struck back. The automated microwave emitters that descended from the ceiling kept most of the civilians back, but some seemed insensitive to pain, and a burst of flex rounds, set to plastic deformation, were needed to keep them down. Those individuals were dragged immediately off to security, for confirmation of mortal status; something which did not help the worsening mood.

The crackle of gunfire was almost inaudible over the dreadful noise from outside, but the herd feeling spreading faster than any one person could spread the word, rivalling the speed at which the messages passed between the ArcSec officers themselves, advantaged by radio communications. Rumours spread in those somewhat-quieter areas deeper into the structure, with no apparent source; standing alone from any obvious person to blame or thank for the information. The Migou were attacking, it was claimed. The Dagonites were attacking. The military was opening fire on completely innocent protesters at the airport, unprovoked, as part of some coup. The arcology wall had already been breached. It was some top secret government to scare the populace and ensure that President Nyanda could push through the Post-Natum Modification Bill. The rumours ran like water, from areas of high suspicion to low, and none could really say what was true or false. The fact that this put the crowd even more on edge, and slowed it down in its panic, the disorganisation breaking the clean lines of evacuation, was surely just coincidence.

What was not a coincidence, nor could be construed as something innocent or a simple proclivity of humanity, was the way that, scattered throughout the airport, clusters of private individuals drew weapons. Because they should _not_ have owned those weapons, they should _not_ have been able to even get them into the airport, past security, and they _certainly_ should not have even been able to fire them in an area broadcasting a weapons-lock signal. There was no target profile, no suspicious youths or embittered Enclavists. The suddenly-armed individuals were from all ethnicities, subspecies, and backgrounds; a mix of machine pistols and sharders their choice, all small enough to be concealed against the person.

The crackle of automatic weapons fire became a staccato counterpoint to the immeasurable volume outside, as ArcSec engaged these unknown forces. And turned on itself, as entire squads turned traitor and opened fire on their own, mowing down the masses that milled in the chaos just as willingly as they did against those who fought back.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The grey-armoured squads, the skull-like visages of heavy combat armour masking their features, and their Nephilim escorts were clustered outside the entrance to the airport. They had regained local control of the security network, so they were making better time than they would if they didn't have the aid of the profusion of cameras that filled all public places in the New Earth Government, but they were still going slowly. Yes, it was true that no-one should have been let into the airport with the kind of sorcerous warding that would render someone invisible to surveillance, but it was also true that no-one should have been let into the airport with firearms, and that had turned out _exceptionally_ well, hadn't it?

And a careful onlooker would have seen that they were not all marked with the insignia of NEG forces, whether police or military, but instead some badges showed three connected squares, the top one filled in with a circle, tilted onto their side and arranged into a shape which bore a vague resemblance to an "A". That was because, quite simply, they were not part of the NEG. They were forces from the Ashcroft Foundation, and they had one task here. They were heavily armed and accompanied by their own Nephilim, in itself an anomaly.

Major Katsuragi glanced sideways at one, and shivered slightly. Tsuchigumo were creepy; there was no two ways about it, and as Operations Manager for Project Evangelion, she knew creepy. But the Nephilim were a product of the Engel Group, not the Evangelion Group, so it wasn't like she had to put up with them every day.

"Do you have a fix on his location?" she asked one of the technical staff, back down in the Geocity, with access to the areas of the network they has secured.

"No, Major," responded the woman, with an almost audible shake of her head. "The LAIs aren't getting pings off facial recognition in any of the areas we have access to, and his PCPU isn't active in the airport grid. No trackers, either."

Misato blinked heavily once. "Fine. Tell me if you get anything," then shrugged, retuning her radio back to the command frequencies.

The babble across the tactical channels confirmed that they had eliminated the abortive ambush, and that they were moving again. She could _feel_ the Staff Sergeant... okay, she wasn't actually a Staff Sergeant if they were going to be technical, but internally, the Ashcroft units used the standard NEGA ranks, and she was going to be damned if she called her a "Coordinator" or whatever management-speak the higher-ups - ignoring the fact that she was a higher-up herself, but she didn't feel like one, so there - what was she thinking? Oh yes. She was going to be damned if she didn't call her by what she really was. No, wait. It was that the Staff Sergeant was looking at her.

"Yes?" she asked her.

The woman, a hard-faced _nazzady_ with rigidly angular tattoos that wrapped around her mouth and eyes, paused, just for a moment. "Major," she said, addressing Misato, who did genuinely also hold rank in the NEGA, quite apart from her Ashcroft status, "you shouldn't be here. You should stay at the perimeter."

Misato shrugged. "I'm aware of the danger."

"But you shouldn't endanger yourself like this." There was a hint of complaint in the NCO's voice.

"I said I'd meet him here, didn't I?" she said, with a smile. She could _feel_ the other woman's glare, even through the opaque helmet. "Okay, the Representative will have my skull if this goes wrong." she admitted, somewhat reluctantly. "I have to be here, on the scene."

"Now, that makes a lot more sense," said the Nazzadi, in a slightly worried tone. "Move out!" she barked over the general frequencies.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

A silvery rain filled the air, swirling and shifting, making the ferocious currents of air visible to anyone who cared to look. Here, the silver bulged and flowed in ferocious vortices, as low-flying supersonic aircraft tore at the Harbinger, like ants against an elephant; there, they spiralled upwards, born by the fires that sprinkled the city that wrapped around the arcologies, started by the ordinance that missed the monster. The spheres of compression and distortions painted symbols across the sky, but there were none who could, or indeed cared to read them.

"We have a positive ID!" shouted the agent from the GIA, leaping up from his seat down in the command centre. "It's positively in the Harbinger sub-category. IDed as Harbinger-3, I repeat, Harbinger-3, assigned the codename 'Asherah'."

"Right!" snapped Field Marshal Jameson. "Now, what can you tell us about it?"

"I've sent the data, but... not much."

'Not Much' was in fact an eminently accurate statement, if a little generous; 'Hardly Anything' would be more accurate. There may have been plenty of abridged meta-analyses of primitive mythology, trying to tie the identity down, but hard facts, and a convenient list of weakness, were entirely absent.

Jameson sighed, sweeping his fingers back through his greying dirty-blond hair. "Useless. But it's a Herald-level threat, and a Harbinger above that." He paused. "Are the scrubbers in place?" he asked, staring at the map projected against the inside of his eyeball.

"Yes," replied Lehy, looking at the same image on her arglasses. "But look. It's compromised Victor-Alpha's integrity. It won't be able to take a ground zero without major damage; maybe even a collapse. And the whole place will be contaminated."

"Better to sacrifice Victor-Alpha than let it get any further in," retorted Jameson. "If they haven't evacuated, it's their fault." His blue eyes locked with Lehy's red ones. "They've had warning."

Admiral Tatuta interrupted the growing tension. "There might be another way." He bought up another display, the map already marked with probabilities and vectors. "Look. Its path is going to take it across one of the One-Five-Kilo-Tangos."

Jameson shook his head. "We can't be sure that it'll move close enough... and using one of them will do far more damage to L2 than sacrificing a single overground arcology." He shook his head again. "I'm opposed."

Lehy winced. "Yes. I agree with Jameson," she added. They all stared at the vector which mapped the path Harbinger-3 had taken, which had led it across an arcology, and the greyed out icons of destroyed units that mapped its path with a one-to-one correlation. She raised one hand, subdermal lights already glowing. "I am prepared to give authorisation."

She threw another glance back. _That man_ was still there. She could swear that he hadn't moved a muscle since last time she had looked.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Panting, Shinji grasped at the nearest vertical object, which turned out to be an advertising panel, and clutched onto it, trying to stop the world spinning. His lungs were on fire, and his knees felt like jelly. _Perhaps the heat is melting them_, he thought, absently, as he pulled in one painful breath after another, his mouth filled with the taste of his own blood. The jumper still clamped to his nose wasn't exactly making it easy to breath, and it had already soaked through making the fabric warm and sticky. Pulling it away, he swallowed, the taste making him feel even sicker, and stared down at the blood. That was a lot of blood. Well, it looked like a lot of blood. Just... not in very absolute terms. He was feeling a little faint, but how much of that could be attributed to the blood-loss, how much of it to the sight of his own blood, and how much of it to a desperate sprint was uncertain. Oh, and looking at the extra-normal entity, of course; everyone knew that such things could cause AWS.

In most cases, an activity which increased heart rate would not have been the best idea when you were already suffering from a nasal haemorrhage. This was not 'most cases', given that _a damn giant thing had almost crushed him_.

At least the room was wobbling less. He ran his tongue over his top lip, and dabbed at it with the already blood-soaked jumper. Pinching the bridge of his nose, and tilting his head back slightly, he headed off again still breathing heavily, at a walk, following the evacuation signs still shown along the walls.

It wasn't long until he managed to make his way to one of the evacuation points. There was a squad of ArcSec troopers down in the concourse, in the diamond-faceplated helmets that were almost their insignia, along with... some kind of power armour, he wasn't some kind of military obsessive to be able to recognise such things on sight.

"Hey!" he shouted out, voice muffled by the stained jumper. "Help!"

They spun towards him, weapons raised upwards.

And then the world bled to... strangeness. There was a reddish haze over everything, and he was feeling even worse; the light-headedness made him feel like he was underwater, like moving through treacle or something. _Well, what I think moving through treacle would feel like. I haven't exactly done it before_, Shinji thought to himself. It suddenly seemed vitally important that he correct his chain of thought.

In slow motion, the wall on the other side of the open area blew out. And that was the best term that Shinji could think of; as lithium-red flames licked around each individual particle. He could see them all, each one cutting its own path through the air.

There was a figure. A figure walking out of that blast, keeping pace with the explosions. White hair and skin the cold dead white of fresh snow and grey eyes stared impassively out of the inferno that painted her in crimson light.

The ArcSec troopers began to... come apart, like rag-dolls torn apart by invisible hands, slow-moving roses blooming forth from the rich soil. The slowed pulse of their weapons barely had time to start, bullets tracing cylinders through their passage, before they stopped, the muted thuds seemingly far, far away.

All the time, the girl was staring, not at the dying men, but at the dark-haired boy; her eyes locked on him. And a blink, and she was gone.

Shinji Ikari collapsed.

A muffled sound, though the blackness. A sharp pain, a pinch or prick, in his arm.

"Genetics match. He's human, and untainted," he heard, from somewhere above him; the voice mechanical and androgynous in its artificiality. "Uh... no major injuries that I can see," after a pause. "The blood is from a nosebleed, he hasn't been shot. We should get him checked out, though. I recommend a full neural scan, too, to ensure that he hasn't been compromised."

"No," was the reply, in an identical voice. "We don't have the time." He felt a gloved hand put on his chin, moving his head around. "Is he awake?"

Shinji opened his eyes at that. A skull-like mask, dark grey, blotched with brown and blue and other neutral colours stared down at him. A ring of pale flesh and a pair of large brown eyes stared down at him through the transparent eyesockets.

"Shinji Ikari," said the mechanical voice. "Wait, no, damn it." The figure reached down and did something on its forearm. "Is it back to... yes," it said again, in a woman's voice. "Um... I'm Misato Katsuragi. Sorry I'm late," she managed.

It was to Shinji's credit that he only yelped a bit.

Everything after that moved so quickly. He was hustled out of the immediate area of the airport, deeper into the arcology.

"What... what on earth happened back there... um, ma'am?" he asked Major Katsuragi, as they strode through down a long hallway. She had been revealed, once the helmet was removed, to be a rather pretty woman, looking to be... he estimated somewhere in her early thirties, but he wasn't sure on that, a mass of black hair pinned up to be worn under the cowl and helmet of the armour. She glanced sideways at him.

"Please, call me Misato," she said, with a grin. "Well, how to put it?" She paused, the smile gone. "Ah... a cultist group attacked the airport."

"They'd managed to get members into ArcSec; you almost stumbled right into one of their squads," added one of her subordinates, in the mechanical voice of the helmets. "It's just as well that you ended up in one of the sectors we'd got infosupremacy back."

"Heh. Turns out that ArcSec don't stand a chance against one of these babies," said a male voice, which came from one of the monstrous arachnoid tank-walkers that was following them. "Pyam! Pyam! Pyam!" he added, making gun sounds with his mouth. "Kabloom!"

The Nephilim, an arcanocyberxenobiological monstrosity, was the power-armoured equivalent to an Engel. The somewhat hastily assembled teams were using Tsuchigumo, a spider-like model that stood two-and-a-half metres tall, the cybernetically-connected pilot in an armoured capsule mounted on the back. Earlier Nephilim had used remote parapsychic controllers, but the inferior armour and the fact that the creatures went berserk and tried to kill the handler if the link was disrupted, had led to the modern designs, which used the same control system as the larger Engels. Their mantis-like forearms, where the primary weapons systems were mounted, swivelled, covering all arcs, while the mandibles were locked away, only to be released in a combat situation, for the glutinous acid they dribbled was hell on the floor, and the monster in the armour _really_ did not need a floor with weakened structural integrity.

"You're just happy because you got to go in through the wall," retorted one of the mechanical voices of the infantry.

"Why, yes. Yes I am." The man paused. "And it worked. I mean, we got every last one of them _haranga amobuvula_. It wasn't like they didn't all deserve to die, isn't it?"

"Um..." Shinji paused. "I was talking about... um, the giant thing that stepped through the wall." There was a silence. "That was the right thing? I mean, it did happen? Or were you talking about the White who killed those ArcSec guys?"

"A giant thing. As in... the Harbinger? You _saw_ it?" managed Misato, after a prolonged pause.

The boy swallowed hard. "It almost stepped on me," he said, closing his eyes. The scene still hung heavy before his eyes, every detail both clear and nightmarish.

There was the sound of armoured glove against skin, as Misato's hand collided with her forehead. "This is... typical," she muttered, almost to herself, as she rubbed her forehead, wincing. "First the Harbinger shows up, and then the cultists attack, and then the Harbinger almost steps on you. I don't know how today can get..." she shook her head, and changed the direction of the conversation. "Wait, what was that about a Wh..."

Any answer was obscured by the simultaneous crackle of all the radios, as the emergency override flared to life. "November Blue!" the male voice announced. "November Blue! All forces, evacuate Victor-Alpha! Proximity Close One Kilo-Tango nuclear strike against Harbinger-3. Echo-Victor-Charlie-Foxtrot. I repeat, this will be a Echo-Victor-Charlie-Foxtrot warhead."

A hurricane of English, Japanese, and poorly conjugated Nazzadi, with occasional divergences into mispronounced Cantonese, profanity erupted forth from Misato's mouth, before cutting off, almost as if a switch were flipped.

"Run!" she yelled. "We need to go deeper!"

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The night-black figure of Asherah, Harbinger-3, strode through the city, the burning-red sun on its chest illuminating the mist of scrubbers such that their coalesced mass appeared as blood-like snow, descending from the heavens. With a sweep of its hand, it scythed through a platoon of tanks, the separation clean and precise, and took another step forwards, even as it was battered by the tumultuous hail of missiles that struck it.

And then, all at once, the rain stopped, and the stars of the plasma weaponry died. Tanks bunkered down, aircraft turned and fled, and mecha hid. In the midst of what had been the catastrophe of war, suddenly, there was silence, broken only by the discordant rattle of the collapse of buildings.

The Harbinger actually paused. Despite the lack of motion, there was a terrible sense that some dread gaze, some third eye was sweeping across the landscape. One kilometre up, a flight of stealthed bombers momentarily decloaked, as missiles poured forth from open bay doors, racks fired vertically downwards. Most of this mass were decoys, of course, the standard submunition warheads and seekers protecting the precious heavier weapons that even now arced down towards Asherah.

With an elegance which belied its speed, the Harbinger raised one hand, lamprey-like fingers squirming and writhing. Lines of force, like puppeteers' strings, were only just visible by what they did to the air around them, but the effects were evident for all to see, as the vECF-warheads were picked out, while the dummies were left to patter against the dark mass of the creature.

If one were to assign human emotions to that thing, it would most certainly have been smug.

And if one were to continue the same anthromorphisation, it was almost certainly surprised when a capital-grade railgun, fuelled by the arcology power grid and mounted into the superstructure of the Elizabeth Arcology belched, slamming a hypersonic nuclear warhead into its body.

Its night-black form evaporated in the searing whiteness of that terrible radiance.

"_Absul zy termakrony_!" roared Field Marshal Lehy, pumping her fist at the sight. The rest of the command centre was similarly elated. The pulse washed over the sensory feeds, slowly rebooting one by one, to reveal a blasted wasteland, the colour drained from ruined, already crumbling buildings, as a great fungal cloud, the grey interspersed with arcanochromatic aberrations, expanded upwards.

"Target status?" asked Jameson, a smirk on his face.

"Sensors can't penetrate ground-zero. Switching to visual feed from PWL-560."

The camera, lens smeared with dust, was staring upwards, at the bloom above. It was hard to see in the dark cloud, but nothing of the Harbinger was visible.

"We're getting reports; we have major structural failures in Victor-Alpha. Fault lines all along axis A2, multiple reports of breached domes, massive damage all along the west facing. Casualty figures are going to be..." the woman was silenced with a wave of a hand.

"We were aware of that. Casualties were predicted," said Jameson, a cold, distant note in his voice. He turned to glance back at the circle of calm at the back of the room, where the orange-glassed man sat. "Thank you for your assistance, _Advisor_," he said, the sarcasm heavy, "but I believe we have things entirely sorted out. Don't hesitate to..."

"Sensors on-line, full spectroscopic analysis and r-state divergence coming in," reported an officer. "There's... there's nothing in the middle of the crater. Target has been completely destroyed! I repeat, target has been eliminated."

Lehy sat back, her arms crossed, and relaxed. The cost had been high, it was true, but the Harbinger, Asherah, had been destroyed. At least this time she had been protecting the city when she did... what she had just authorised. Staring up at the screen, she shook her head at the sight of the tainted mushroom cloud. Variant-electron-catalysed fusion weapons were horrible things to use this close to a city in friendly territory. She could only hope that the scrubbers could mop up the arcanochromatic by-products before they entered the water table.

Her PCPU clattered onto the table, as her jaw dropped open.

In the heart of the cloud, there was a deeper darkness, a gaseous stygian void that boiled and seethed, dancing strange patterns in the swirling midst of the afterblast. It was a raven choking in smoke, the silhouette of the hand of god against the wall of Plato's cave, an amorous sonnet to a reality that cared nothing for those who dwelled in it. The light-devouring, acrid cloud-within-a-cloud twisted and turned, but its mean velocity was always inwards, where the scattered plasticity of the voidborn abomination was nebulously coalescing into material form once more.

"Massive r-state flux! Oh god! Nothing on norms, but... ah, the Shaws are burning out!"

"_Opuserabi_," Lehy muttered. "It cannot be."

"Damn it!" Tatuta slammed his fist into the table, making the discarded PCPU dance. "We killed you, you bastard!"

Jameson flashed a glance at the Admiral, and then shook his head slightly. "Why wasn't that expected?" he asked in an ice-cold tone, glaring at the GIA analyst.

The younger man flinched slightly. "No recorded data points," he responded, words clipped. "Reason? Uncertain. Possible to extrapolate, true, but... only guesses. Very little known, after all." He took a few deep breaths. "Erm. Yes. We do know that it damaged its body; the way that it's regenerating? Reincorporating? I'm not sure what the right word is, but whatever it's doing, it's a sign of a higher dimension lifeform. Look at how the new form isn't identical." He paused, and licked his lips. "The arcanochromatic taint in the weapon should propagated in higher dimensions, but... only so much that the sources we have access to can do."

And, indeed, the form was changed. If it once had been some immaculate monster, a messenger that bought news that was anathema, then it was no-longer that. Its symmetry was broken, the unity of its plague-mask broken into multiplicity, its bones broken and splayed into a new carapace. And the red sun burned ever brighter.

The white-haired man bent slightly, as he spoke softly to his glassed companion. "It is regenerating. Precisely as we expected."

The younger man stared impassively up at the screen through orange arglasses. "Yes. It would not have survived as long as it has if it were not capable of surviving such things."

"Probability that they will get to fire again?"

"Negligible, even if they authorise a second shot rapidly."

From behind steepled fingers, the dark-haired man watched as the reformed figure of Asherah raised a hand. This was not a beam, not a projected line of force. No, a thirty-metre radius sphere of the Elizabeth Arcology merely ceased to exist, the crystalline flare of diamond-like brilliance flaring in the perfect hemisphere cut into the surface. And another one, a bite out of the flesh of reality. And another one, each one placed over a capital grade defence.

There was shouting and profanity from the military leaders, as Harbinger-3 systematically crippled all capital-grade defences in its sight, and, if-anything, more intense yells from the scientists in the area, as their sensory equipment told them just how impossible what was happening.

"Impressive," said the white-haired man, his tone quiet and understated.

"It is intelligent," replied his companion. "Only a fool would mistake it for a mindless beast."

The barbed comment was barely veiled. And the point did pierce the flesh of the great beast that was the New Earth Government. It only took a minute for the military Triumvirate to approach him, metaphorical cap in armoured hand.

"The Ashcroft Foundation now has full authorisation to deploy experimental or specialised assets to counter this threat," said Admiral Tatuta, voice stiff. "The NEGA and NEGN will provide all necessary assistance to aid in the elimination of Harbinger-3."

"Are you sure?" asked the older man, following the formal procedure for such a request. "Do you believe that the conventional military forces have proven incapable of dealing with a known or unknown extra-normal threat?"

The Nazzadi glared at the older man, slowly letting out a breath. "Yes," he finally managed. "Considering the demonstrated resilience of the entity, the damage that it has inflicted so far, and the fact that to use anything more powerful would destroy the city we are trying to protect... yes, we have no effective way. We are formally requesting the assistance of the Ashcroft Foundation to destroy this threat."

The white-haired man leant forwards, his dace studiously neutral. "By any means necessary?" he asked.

It was Field Marshal Lehy who shook her head. "No, Advisor Fuyutsuki," she said. "Anything used must have been given a RTE clearance rating, but we're letting you use anything that fits that, rather lax," she added, her tone clinical, "criterion."

The white-haired man nodded. It was what had been expected. It was sufficient. He nodded. "Understood," he said, turning to leave. Without a word, the glassed man joined him, together stepping out of the command centre.

Once outside, the dark-haired man nodded. "Yes," he said, simply. There was no celebration, no dances of joy.

Fuyutsuki glanced sideways. "What will you do?" he asked. In a sense, this was a pointless question. The answer was already known.

"Neither the Engels nor anything from Herkunft would be sufficient against a Herald, let alone a Harbinger sub-type. I am authorising the deployment of the Evangelions." He paused, an emotion, far too fast to read, flicking across his face. "Specifically, Unit 01."

"Activate Unit 01?" The tone was still somewhat surprised. "We don't have a pilot."

Gendo Ikari, Representative of Ashcroft Europe, stared back at the older man, his former teacher. "It is time," he said, simply, as he strode out the door. "And we have nothing else left."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Silence in an arcology was an unnerving experience. Normally, there was always the slight hum of air processors, the vibrations, below conscious perception, from the maglevs that ran throughout the superstructure, and the bustle and commotion of human beings living life in such close proximity to each other.

All that was gone, muffled under layers of choking dust in this twilight, the emergency lighting dimmed and broken.

Shinji coughed a few times, the taste of blood in his mouth. There was a heavy bulk pressing down on top of him, something solid. He squirmed, but it seemed to be no use. He was trapped under the unmoving bulk, forever stuck until someone heard his pitiful cries for help, if indeed there was such a person; it was possible that the blast had killed...

"Are you okay?" asked Misato, as she straightened up, pulling herself off the boy, from where she had been shielding his unarmoured and hence squishy form.

Shinji merely groaned; as might have been guessed from the name, heavy combat armour was, perhaps unsurprisingly, rather heavy, and although it may have had artificial musculature built into it to take some of the weight off the user, that helped not one bit when the wearer was lying on top of you. And, despite the picture that she had sent, the actuality of Misato throwing herself at him had been both unsatisfying and painful.

"Report!" she ordered, switching to internal communications.

A babble of reports came rushing in, the armours feeding their own status reports to the LAI in her systems. They were largely intact; there were three broken wrists, two of them from the same person, which was always a hazard when falling over in heavy combat armour, and one of the Tsuchigumo was crippled from where the floor beneath it had given way, trapping its legs. Even as she watched, the hatch at the back unsealed, and the pilot levered herself out, her status reports blended with cursing in Nazzadi, as torches danced through the dust, picking out the damaged surroundings.

It had gone better than the last time she had been nuked, all in all.

Sighing at the thought that she could actually think such a thing, she glanced down at the boy, who had at least sat up, and was massaging his ribs, coughing as he did so. He certainly didn't look like much. She had read his file and... well, there certainly wasn't much that stood out. Quiet, polite, fairly intelligent, a good chef, and good on the cello, if a little sarcastic and prone to passivity at times. He would make a nice, somewhat submissive husband for someone someday. That comment had actually been written in his file by the school's councillor. Oh, certainly, his background wasn't so normal, but... well, circumstances were much altered from what they had been even when she had been born. The population of the Earth was 4.3 billion individuals. Only 2.5 billion of them were _Homo sapiens sapiens_, down from a peak of eight billion only a few decades ago. The definition of "mental stability" had undergone quite noticeable redefinition. Almost no-one over the age of twenty had not lost a close family member, to the First Arcanotech War, to the genocidal Migou, to the depredations of the Rapine Storm or the atrocities of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, and many of the younger ones were similarly bereaved. What was one more child with a dead mother and a father who would not care for him?

"Can I get an extra breather over here?" she ordered. "Or at least a mask."

Thankfully, Shinji sucked clean air in. That merely prompted another fit of coughing, but at least nothing more would be coming in, right? Actually, from his experiences so far today, it was highly probable that the universe would find another way to make him suffer. _Well, at least as long as nothing else ended up standing on me, I should at least avoid some bruises, right?_ he thought.

"Thank you... uh, Major Katsuragi," the boy managed, once his lungs no longer felt like they were trying to strangle him.

The woman shook her re-helmeted head, eyes locked at him through the now-transparent eyes. "It's fine. And... really, please, call me Misato."

Shinji paused, and then shrugged. "Um... okay, Misato."

"Okay, we've actually got some luck, Major," said a mechanical voice from over her shoulder. "Power's still on for one of the cargo lifts. That'll get us down to VATS-011, and from there, we're running safe."

The Major turned. "Have you checked the lift?" she asked, calmly.

The figure nodded, gender concealed beneath the armour. "Yep. Local MaiLAI gives all clear, and we levered open the doors; maglev rail is intact as far as we can see. And it's not like something could turn off an A-Pod, is it? Without causing a failmode? Of course it's working."

Misato nodded. "Right. Leave the damaged Tsuchigumo in lockdown mode, and prep the..."

"Uh... Major," interrupted the mechanical voice, "there's no need to micro us. Already done, as per standard procedures. Injured are prepped for transport, Nephilim's locked down, we have a perimeter set up, and we've got subverts in the local security network... and, yes, they have CATSEYE here, so we'd be finding wards."

Shinji could hear the woman's grin in her lilting voice. "Uh... sorry. Force of habit; I have NCOs for a reason, after all." She turned back to Shinji. "Come on, then," she said, pulling him to his feet.

It was more than a little cramped in the lift, with the surviving Tsuchigumo to blame for any lack of space. Most of the infantry were perched uncomfortably on the armoured monsters and their sprawling legs; quite apart from the fact that they really weren't shaped for comfort, there was also the way that they made... noises; deep, almost too deep to hear, but the pulses of sound reverberated through their hulls, putting everyone on edge.

The fact that everything was still lit in emergency red lighting didn't help, either. Or the knowledge that there was a horrific arcane monstrosity up on the surface, which was, quite unfortunately, occupied with destroying the city.

Shinji, who was keeping as far away as possible from the armoured spider-like monsters, spoke up. "Um... Misato?" he asked. "Where are we going?"

The woman glanced back at him. "Down. We're heading to the Geocity; it's an Ashcroft-run facility, under the main arcologies and skirts."

Shinji did in fact already know that, but chose to say nothing.

The woman continued. "What do you know about the Ashcroft Foundation?" she asked. It was probably a good idea to keep him talking, she felt, prevent him from thinking too much about what had just happened. Lucky, really; the fact that he had _actually_ seen the Harbinger, without an autocensor or any kind of protection was probably buried under the whole "Just Almost Nuked" bit. She really didn't want him going AWS-symptomatic right now.

_Of course_, thought Misato. _It's not like I don't have my own losses to mourn._

_That was my _car _up there. My _actual _car. I'd just fitted the new seats and everything. Now what's it? Some kind of colour-drained crumbly thing, that's what. Argh! I'd just paid for that. And all those upgrades, and the custom paint job I actually went and got done-user unique... oh no, and the one-use licence components, and the fact that it's a police model..._

I am totally claiming that off the Foundation. I lost it on their business, so they can damn well pay for a new one.

Content that issue had been resolved, at least until it actually came to filling out the claim form and dealing with the bureaucrats, she turned her attention back to the boy.

Shinji shrugged, which turned into a cough. "The normal," he said, once he had recovered. "Pioneers in the arcane sciences, hold the IP on most arcanotech... but still a non-profit organisation. Sort of actually a wing of the government, but not really, but actually; not like the megacorps or the IPcorps... enough that Ashcroft Advisors have permanent positions in the government... which is a bit odd."

Misato grinned at him, face concealed. "I'm a NEGA officer on permanent secondment to the Foundation, with Advisor status; the rest of them," she pointed a thumb back at the other soldiers, "...are other either NEGA seconded, or Ashcroft employees," she said, sweetly.

Shinji groaned. _Serves me right for not looking at their badges,_ he thought. _Although... come on. I totally have an excuse for being more than a little distracted. What with the... the everything._

"My teacher said they do an important task to protect the human race," he said out loud. _And I'm sure the fact that the school was an Ashcroft Academy has _nothing _to do with that._

Misato gazed deep into his eyes, for a moment too long. "I notice you haven't said anything about your father," she said.

The boy winced. That was true. "I haven't seen him in two years, and that was just in passing, because he was on some business trip." _And I'm sure the only reason he dropped in was that it would have looked off for him not to,_ he added, mentally. "It just happened to coincide with... with the anniversary."

"And yet you came when he asked you to," Misato said. Shinji didn't like this. He couldn't read her expression, under that mask, and she was... well, the way she was acting, the way she was paying attention to this specific point was making him uncomfortable.

"I came because my foster mothers told me to go," he managed. "And he only talks with me if he wants something."

Somewhat surprisingly, the woman shrugged. "True. He's not a people-person. A little too much of a sorcerer; he's my boss, but always creeps me out a bit. Still," she continued, in a more thoughtful tone of voice, "I don't think you really get to the position of European Representative by being a people-person... at least, I'd prefer a technocrat. A people-person is good with people. What you want is a person who's good at their job, rather than someone who got it by being popular. Shame that makes him... well, him."

Shinji balled his fists, not saying anything. He really wasn't feeling charitable, given that his father's most recent request had led to the events of today.

And twelve years ago, a small child bawled his eyes out, left with two strange women by a man whose silhouetted figure, a dark shape that touched the sky, even now receded from the desolate boy.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Things were still going about as well as they had been, up on the surface, and looked like they were progressing as might be expected, to their ultimate conclusion.

"The _Athens_ is KIA. Oh god. The entire front of the ship, just gone!"

"_Asato maa sadgamaya._"

"Hull breach. Ejecting! No! It's not firing!"

"_Tamaso maa jyotirgamaya._"

"Bravo Squadron has lost its Shinnan. Bloodmare is down."

"_Mtryor maa amrtan gamaya._"

"We have a lock on the sun-thing, Staff. Firing a Vecef. Hit. No effect."

"_Aum shaanti shaanti shaanti._"

That is to say, 'Everybody Dies'.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The cavernous room was lit in actinic brightness, a brightness only accentuated by the white walls which reached up high into the air. Monitoring drones, their car-sized bulk hanging motionless in the air, formed a stationary flock, their blue searchlights focussed at the middle of the room, the light sparkling off the viscous dark fluid that filled the vast reservoir.

"Okay... okay... okay... yes, there it is."

The only breach of this perfect, motionless tranquillity was the barge that sat just above the water, a large number of cables hanging down, forming lazy ripples where they broke the surface of the fluid.

"Visual confirmation?"

"Yes, check the feed. There... 7732 has a tear in it. There's corrosion, too; looks like fluid stains... yes, we have an i-seep." The man sighed, relaxing a bit. "Look at it on the 25x zoom. It's not quite healed around the flesh-implant join."

The woman's voice remained terse. "Seal it, then replace 7732, and all adjoining strands. I want a full examination of the contaminated section."

"It's a good thing we caught this," said another female voice. "We'd have had noticeable performance degradation if the right TR-44 cluster had failed. None of this was showing on the last maintenance check; I've cross-referenced it already. I hate to think what would have happened if you hadn't ordered this instant check, doctor."

"But I did," said the first woman. "Get it fixed... and be ready for any more finds; I ordered the Operators to run a twitch-check on the rest of it, as soon as you're done."

"Understood, Dr Akagi" replied the man. Anything else he was about to say was interrupted by the call over the radio system for his superior, who merely sighed.

"Get it done."

A humanoid figure emerged from the fluid, the thick, clingy liquid slowly oozing from the bright orange suit to form stringy trails down to the surface of the pool. With a click, the power cable was detached from the umbilical port on the bright orange hazard exosuit, leaving it to run off batteries, as the A-Pod manoeuvred it into a decontamination chamber that led out of this chamber.

The blond-haired woman who emerged from the other side was not looking pleased, worry lines wrinkling over her forehead, and around the corners of her eyes. The roots of her dyed blond hair were showing, and there was more than a fair amount of white mixed in, despite the general youthfulness of her face. She drummed her fingers against the wall, as she waited for the airlock seal to open.

"Dr Ritsuko Akagi to..."

"I heard you," she snapped at the muse. "Acknowledge receipt of message." She sighed. "Again. Typical. How does she manage it?" The woman shook her head, and paused, taking a sniff of the undersuit she had been wearing for the inspection, wrinkling her nose slightly. "No time to change, either," she muttered to herself, as the door hissed open. "Oh well." She shrugged on a lab coat over the sweaty undersuit, and connected her harcontacts back to the main network. Around her irises, a cog-like array of blue lights appeared, lighting up in sequence as the device initialised.

"How are we doing, Maya?" she asked, raising one finger to an ear, as she strode off down the corridor, feet squeaking on the floor.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Well, I'm a little annoyed you weren't a little more impressed by the Geocity," retorted Misato.

Shinji sighed. "It is identical to the Toyko-3 one. School trips," he explained. "It's not like I haven't seen one in person before... and isn't there one under Colombo..." he started ticking them off on his fingers, "...and Antananarivo-2, and on one of those Caribbean islands in Nazda-Duhni, anyway?"

"... there was also one under Berlin-2," muttered Misato.

"So, yeah. It's not like a truedome geocity is rare." Shinji paused, and coughed, wiping his forehead with a sleeve. He was feeling more than a little bit nauseous, no doubt from the lack of sleep and the... everything. "Really deep, yes, but not rare. Now, um, where are we going?"

"We're down in BB21," said one of the soldiers, her close-cropped hair sweat-covered, visible now that there had been a general removing of the skull-like masks.

"Yeah, great job, Valy," retorted another one. "Obviously you're some kind of positionomancer, given that it's written on the wall. Now, where's that?"

The woman shrugged. "I don't know. This whole place is a morass."

"God, why did they turn off the Grid support?" a thin-faced man asked. "It's not like they could emwar the Geocity; would it be _far_ too much to ask for at least leaving map-tools operational."

"I don't understand," the Major said, getting back on topic. "It should be recognising us. Something is wrong." She paused. "Honestly. I'm not just lost; this is actively sorcerous countermeasures. Stupid, stupid, stupid."

"I'm pretty sure we've been here before," interject Shinji. "Look... that's the greenhouse bit under the blue sign."

"That just proves it. There's no way that we could get that..." Misato frowned, her face suddenly clearing. "Oh... heya Rits!" She waved at the blond woman who was, even now, bearing down on the group with her eyes locked on the Major. She looked... annoyed. "The wards seem to be snagging us; can you get them to turn the mazing off?"

Ritsuko frowned. "What on earth are you talking about? Why would we turn the mazing on? It's not like something like that would work against a Harbinger, anyway."

Misato flushed bright red. "Are you sure..." she managed.

"Yes, I think I'd know if I'd gone and activated those procedures," said Ritsuko, stepping rather too close to Misato. She tapped the other woman's head with two fingers. "Huh. Not hollow."

"Yeah, well, um... well, you turned off the automap functions," retorted the black haired woman. "And it wasn't like it was just me who got lost," with a glance back at the other soldiers. "Who designed this place?"

The blond shook her head. "This isn't the time to look for excuses. We're short of hands and time." Ritsuko sighed, shaking her head, before Shinji found himself the centre of the focussed attention from the white-coated woman. "You've had him genescanned. I presume that even you can manage that," she said to the Operations Director, without looking away.

"I'm not so stupid as to bring a potentially Tainted individual into the Geocity", retorted Misato, embarrassment transmuting into annoyance. "It checks out. He's Three-November, for sure."

Shinji took a breath. "Um... that's not my birthday."

"Oh, no," said Misato, with a laugh which, to Shinji's ears, sounded somewhat forced. "That's just an ID code we're using for you."

"Don't worry," added Ritsuko. She looked at the boy. Yes, in the flesh, the family resemblance was there... from both sides. _Really, he should be panicking... maybe even gibbering. But, well, I only told him not to worry, not that he shouldn't worry,_ she thought with a hint of spite. _Technically, I wasn't lying. People should pay more attention to the way that things are phrased._

Out loud, she said, "You'll want to read this," as she passed a folded thread-type PCPU to the boy. "Now, come on."

Shinji unfolded the paper-thin device, and the screen flickered to opacity, words flowing across the surface.

Shinji coughed. "Um... it has some kind of briefing thing... and there's a security eula," he said, to the women, flicking down. "A... a really, really long one."

Misato shrugged. "Just press okay. It's fine." The blond beside her shuddered slightly at those words, but said nothing.

"_... when taking into account the ego number (an analogous feature to the principle quantum number in the limited condition that the r-state equals 1, but translated into a higher-dimensional animaic arcane waveform), the procedures for full animaneural synthesis are necessarily restrictive and chaotic and thus prevent the use of the homogenous medium approximation. As a result, the model used for the behaviour and the desired attunement of the waveform is the ANZU model (Ikari et al, 2070); we report that all later attempts to improve on the accuracy of this model have failed, and so the inherent error (see Appendix 22. for details) is still greater than one Cambion-modified standard deviation, under the discrete circumstances of..."_

Shinji's eyes glazed over. He was fairly certain that they were just making up some of those words. It made no sense. In fact, it made negative amounts of sense.

The blond woman, Dr Akagi glanced at him, one eyebrow raised. There were gear-like lights superposed on her irises, the blue speaking of active harcontacts. "You know," she said, as they got into a lift. "It might be best to start at the beginning, rather than skip to the literature reports. Unless you have some kind of advanced degree in the arcane sciences."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The lights were bright, harsh, actinic. Shinji raised an arm, trying to block out the glare, as he blinked furiously, though tear-blurred eyes. The chamber itself was colossal, abuzz with the sussurating echoes of reflected sound. From what he could see there was something darker underneath them, on what must be the floor far below, and some vertical spire in the centre of the room.

"So bright," he muttered.

"Beside him, Ritsuko shook her head, and passed him a pair of darkened argoggles from a pile. "Apologies," she said, somewhat tersely. "I forgot that you wouldn't have... never mind. We have to ensure near-uniform wide-spectrum illumination in the visible electromagnetic spectrum to maintain security against extra-normal incursion."

"Some things can get in through shadows," clarified Misato.

Blinking heavily, he looked around. With a rustle, the thread fell out of his hand, slithering down to the floor, where it lay unnoticed.

A face could now be seen to be staring back at him. A vast, inhuman, monstrous face, mounted on titanic shoulders that protruded from a sea of dark, glutinous liquid, ripples lazily propagating across the surface. A darkened shape in this bright ocean of light; grey and blue and purple and green mottled in five-branched tree-like patterns in the midst of all this white. This room may have been vast, the dark fluid that surrounded the head reaching out for hundreds of metres, leaving it isolated and alone, but, undeniably, it dominated this space.

And it was looking at him.

It was _looking_ at him.

It was looking at _him_.

He let out a yelp, and jumped backwards, back into the reassuringly solid figure of Major Katsuargi. He clung to her, unthinking, as he gasped for breath _a vast foot, the smallest hint of the limb of a colossus, smashed through the wall_, shivering and trembling.

"Try not to fall off," the dark-haired woman said, with a hint of a grin. "We went to a lot of trouble to get you safely here." She paused. "It takes a lot of people like that. And it would really go to waste if you went and splattered yourself on the floor."

Ritsuko glared at Misato, eyes narrowed, and then cleared her throat. "Behold," she said, with more than a little hint of pride. "The zenith of modern arcane engineering; a Capital-Grade Titan-Class Bipedal Arcanocyberxenobiological War Machine." She took a breath. "Evangelion Unit 01."

The boy could only stare up at the thing.

"This is the Test Model. And we believe this is the best hope we have for killing Harbinger-3." There was a pause. "That's the monster that's attacking the city," added Ritsuko, when the statement failed to draw suitable awe.

Shinji stepped away from Misato, who merely looked a bit amused, and coughed. "So... uh, this is some kind of super-Engel, then?"

"It's not an Engel!" snapped the doctor, voice suddenly harsh. "Engels are inferior copies of the Evangelions! Made to be produced in bulk, as a vehicle-scale combat-system! They miss the entire point of an Evangelion."

Shinji's mind highlighted the 'inferior copies' comment, and then drew a thick red line to the 'zenith of modern arcane engineering' remark, and another to the 'Test Model' one. Several large, and purely hypothetical question marks accompanied these connections. Hadn't the Engels been around for five years or so? How old was this thing, then, really?

"I'm sorry," he said, cautiously. "I just thought... no, I'm sorry." He paused. "Is... is this something to do with my father," he said softly. "I... I know he's Representative for Europe, but... well, I suppose I had no idea what he did, really."

"Something to do with me?" The voice echoed across the room, oozing confidence that bordered on hubris, and not an inconsiderable amount of amusement. "You could say that."

The wall behind the Evangelion's head was no longer white. Looking up, past the inhuman horned skull of the armoured monster, Shinji met his father's eyes. Orange-tinted arglasses, each one the size of a tank, stared back. Gendo Ikari may have been elsewhere, but his image was present, gazing down at the tiny figures on the platform. And despite his illusive nature (actually painted against the back of the arglasses), he managed to dominate the room in a way which complimented the Evangelion perfectly.

_Father_ mouthed Shinji, lips moving silently. He may not have seen the man in years, but it was certainly him, staring down at him, his parent's head the size of the _other_ monster before him.

"Been a while, hasn't it."

"Father," he said out loud, nervously running his tongue over his lips. "I..." he trailed off. What did he want to say? Yell at the man for never being there? For not even making the effort to stay in touch? "I..." For dragging him to another continent, from a life which was going fine without him, where he had, at last count, almost been trodden on by a monster, shot by cultists, and dissolved in toxic colour?

He looked away, and swallowed hard, setting his jaw.

"I..." he let out a breath. "Yuki and Gany send their regards," he managed weakly, letting the words remain unsaid.

Gendo Ikari smiled, a hint of teeth flashing on that titanic face, before it became still again. From where he was, he could see the feeds from all angles; see the inner war going on. And, although his progeny had lacked the courage to stand up against him, that had been a rather good attempt at a delaying action, to shift the conversation into safer, from the boy's point of view, territory.

"Prepare him," the man said, eyes cold.

Ritsuko nodded. "I will need," she cocked her head, "yes, that's the authorisation. Understood."

Misato spun to face the other woman. "You're decanting 01?" she asked, eyes flashing. "You're actually going to do it?"

"You knew about it," said Ritsuko coldly, her hands already flying through AR diagrams that only she could see. "And drew up some of the plans."

Misato swallowed. "Yes. It's just..." she paused. "No, it's nothing."

"We have no choice.

"What's going on?" asked Shinji, frowning. He really didn't like the sound of how things were going. Mind you... well, what was the worst that they could do? Make him pilot that thing?

A horrible sinking feeling crept over Shinji. It wasn't a sense of nameless dread, but instead one of quite specifically named dread, which was, in the boy's personal opinion much, much worse.

"I've checked her reports... you were right," responded Misato, raising her eyes from the keypad at her wrist. "She's in no fit state to pilot. I had hoped, given that it took her seven months, and what happened to... but, no. Not like that."

"Can someone tell me what's going on?" blurted out Shinji.

The two women glanced at each other, holding the gaze for a second. Ritsuko looked away first, her gaze flicking to the boy.

"Shinji Ikari, we want you to pilot the Evangelion."

He had already been expecting it, but his knees still trembled, the hair on his neck standing on end. "Against that... against that thing?" he said, voice hollow.

Ritsuko nodded. "Yes."

He said nothing, his gaze lowered, his hands clenching and unclenching. She could hear the sound of his breath; he was hyperventilating.

"You wouldn't have to do anything major," she said, her voice slightly hesitant. "The onboard systems could..."

"No!" he said, head suddenly raised, a wild look in his eyes. "Not a chance. No way." There was a sudden strength in his voice.

"But..."

"I'm not a soldier. I'm not can't fight. And there is _no_ way that... that..." his voice began to break, "... that you're making me go near that thing again." He turned to stare at the image of his father. "I saw it," he said, his voice suddenly falling in volume. "It... almost stood on me," he managed. "No! No! You can't make me! I won't!"

Gendo Ikari stared at the images of his son, stared into the pleading eyes. Unseen, his hands flexed, sending a jolt of pain from the fresh wounds. "Coward," the man said said, simply. There was no rancour, no aggression, no vast parochial disappointment. It was a sole word, two neutral syllables. He flicked to another communications channel. "Fuyutsuki, wake Rei. The candidate may be useless, and time is short."

"You're sure?" the older man replied.

"Yes. Stopping Harbinger-3 is our main priority."

None of this conversation was evident to Shinji. "Coward?" he shouted back. "If it's cowardice to... be sane, yes!" He was visibly shaking. "I saw it! I saw it! And you... you don't even want me! You abandoned me! You don't care!" A litany of grievances broke forth, the words flooding forth from behind a dam, only to spill themselves into the hollowness of the chamber.

Gendo frowned. "And the unplanned premature exposure to Harbinger-3 is... problematic."

"At least he survived it," responded Fuyutsuki.

"Thank you for the observation," responded Gendo, drily. He switched back to the other conversation, staring at the boy, face rigid. When his son fell silence, he spoke. "I did not call you here for petty reasons. I called you here because I need you now."

"Of course," Shinji snapped back. "Why else would you see me? Why me?"

"Because no-one else was suitable."

"No-one was suitable? Is a sixteen-year old normally a _suitable_," the word was spat, "child-soldier?"

"This is no time for histrionics," was the emotionless response, calm and level. "This Evangelion is unique. These circumstances are unique. A pilot was needed." He paused. Shinji was sure that he could see the faintest hint of a smirk. "You were a suitable candidate."

The entire room shook, the image on the far wall and warping, as the arglasses tried to account for the sudden movement of their calibrators. Far above, the NEG had tried another, smaller nuclear weapon; not an arcanochromatically-enhanced one this time, out of shear desperation.

"Do you _really_ think you'll be safe, if you don't pilot?" The man's voice was flat. Again, contempt was absent; just a terrible emptiness, a dispassionate clarity which made the words more piercing. "Do you think that, just because you're not in the armoured war machine, that you will survive if the Harbinger breaks the defences?"

The boy just shook his head, mutely. They didn't need him. There was the Army, and the Navy; the latter had ships many times the size of the figure before him. It wasn't as if this Evangelion could carry enough firepower to turn this kind of battle. Not all could be right with the world with the world if they needed a sixteen-year old to fight.

"Shinji, there's no time left," said Ritsuko, leaning forwards. The room shook again, to emphasise her point. "It's started its decent."

Misato gasped. "It's found us." She tapped Shinji on the shoulder. "Please," she said, holding his gaze, eyes fixed on the darkened arglasses that he alone was wearing. "Get in."

Shaking his head uselessly, Shinji looked away. "No. No. No, no, no."

Gendo watched his son, the cameras that filled the place allowing him to see the boy from any angle. He could track his pulse rate, his respiration, see the sweat that gleamed on Shinji's forehead, even make approximations of neural activity. And that was even before his natural skills came into play; he could read the terror, the panic, the shame and the desire to survive in the boy's posture and expressions. And despite that, despite all that information, he could not compel obedience.

Well, technically he could, but they had found that mental compulsion caused adverse reactions in the synchronisation process. At best, it caused the procedure to fail. The best outcomes were rare.

He opened the channel back to his former teacher once again, turning off the video feed to the chamber. "Fuyutsuki."

"Yes. Rei is almost there." The man paused. "She had already prepared herself for transport," he added, voice uneasy.

"It was necessary," a soft voice interjected. "It was time."

"Rei,"said Gendo. Even if the link back to the Evangelion's hangar had been open, none of them could have read his expression. "Are you... functional."

"Yes. Do not be concerned. I am capable of performing the task."

Gendo nodded. "Good."

Back in the bright room, Ritsuko shook her head, and turned away from the boy. "Switch the active profiles. Maintain the EFCS at its current settings, but reconfigure the higher-level functionality for Rei, then restart!"

"Yes, ma'am." She could hear the enthusiasm in Maya Ibuki's voice over her earpiece. Satisfied, she turned back to the scene before her. She was eminently sure that her senior Magi Operator would be able to handle the task; in fact, it was probable that she would get it done faster than if Ritsuko had been there to perform the task herself. The blonde ran a hand down her spine, feeling the bumps, suddenly feeling old, if such a young woman was her senior Operator. But the attrition rate was horrific among the Operators.

Mind you, she _was_ old by their standards. What was the saying? Smart, Sane, Old. Any arcane scientist got to pick two. Far too true for her liking. And she didn't consider herself stupid. Pulling up a control window, she got to work, hands dancing through the air.

It was amazing what a few words could do. Suddenly, Shinji was no longer the centre of attention, the emptiness of the hall replaced by the commotion of work, exosuited workers scrambling around the walls and between free-floating platforms like bees. Only Major Katsuragi seemed to be paying any attention to him at all, and even then she looked... conflicted, in his opinion.

_I'm... it's good. I don't have to do this... I never had to do it. But no-one now expects me to suddenly get in a mecha and fight. I'm glad. Yes, I'm glad._

But there was something nagging at him.

_But still... this makes no sense_, he thought. _Why would they go to all the effort of getting me from Japan if they could obtain a pilot here, in London-2. That means I am preferable to whoever the replacement is. Which means that the effort required to transport someone to the other side of the globe is considered less than the effort required to find a replacement. Who on earth would keep a potential pilot so far away from the vehicle, anyway? Or not give them any training?_

Frankly, none of this situation made sense. Of course, in the Aeon War, there were things that it was better not to understand, not to be involved in. And Shinji suspected... no, he was pretty sure, come to think of it, that this affair, with the 'Evangelion' thing, and his father, was one of them.

Better not to know.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

There was an irregular cacophony of noises from the machine, a chorus of bleeps and chimes. Sibilant hisses formed the bass, while a drum-beat of the footsteps of the nurses picked out the time. With effort, they slowed to a halt, straining against the inertia of the thing, as they prepared for decent.

Rei Ayanami lay in the tank of orange fluid, her entire body immersed, eyes staring up at the ceiling. No, that was incorrect. _Eye_ staring up at the ceiling. The other socket was empty blackness; hollowed out, in preparation for the transplant of the replacement for the punctured eyeball. Despite the body-temperature liquid, she shivered and twitched constantly, as the implants and drugs and sorceries that were keeping her alive, keeping her here, interfered with her nervous system, sparking random firing neurons to burn like little fireworks within her skull. Random images and susurrations filled her ears. As best she could, she tried to block them out, to ignore the had-beens and yet-to-be sights that danced across her vision. She was needed now, not then or then or then or... she focussed on the bleep of the sarcophagus-like machinery, the sounds attenuated by the fluid that filled her ears, and tried to resist the urge to swing her shield into the base of that pillar of dark crystal. It was not time for that yet.

Shinji watched as another platform emerged from the roof of this place, silently lowering itself, before landing near to where he stood. It was packed with men and women in medical uniforms, faces staring out through transparent faceplates.

Actually, looking around, the only people in this place who weren't wearing that kind of biohazard gear were himself, the Major, and the blonde scientist. That was really reassuring, wasn't it?

The answer was, of course, no, he pointed out to himself. The fact that you're one of the only people not wearing some kind of a biohazard suit is not the time when you want misunderstandings based off rhetorical questions.

He shook his head, and took a deep breath, refocusing on the... was that a tank, a fish-tank, not a tank-tank, that they were unloading? No, he realised. There was a white shape in the midst of that orange liquid, obscured, but still visible.

A white shape.

White hair.

White skin, not human white, but the colour of fresh milk.

One grey eye stared back at him.

Shinji jerked backwards, recoiling as if he had been electrocuted, falling back. There was a jolt of pain as his bruised posterior protested that yet another indignity had been heaped upon it, but it was nothing to the sudden, uncertain terror that filled his head and left him gasping.

_Why? Why is this so creepy? It's just a _sidoci _in a tank... admittedly, that's a bit weird... a tank of orange stuff, and she looks very injured. Very, very injured, actually,_ ran his babbling thoughts. It was true. The medicinal blue of synthetic skin-coverings covered so much of her exposed flesh, fluid drips and tubes snaking into the flesh, and then... and then there was that hollow eyesocket, exposed and bare, obviously prepared for surgery and arcanotherapy given the preparatory markings around it.

Okay, maybe, so, it was very disturbing indeed.

His line of sight was blocked by Misato, who bent down to pull him up. "I seem to be doing this a lot," she said to him. She glanced back, back at the girl in the orange liquid. "Are you feeling all right?" she asked. With a frown, something which almost looked like disappointment, she added, "Is is Rei... the girl? You... you don't have a _problem_ with _sidoci_, do you?"

The _sidoci_. White xenomixes. The anomalous vortex in the mixing of the human and Nazzadi genepools, in the blend of _Homo sapiens sapiens_ and _Homo sapiens nazzadi_. Almost all children of such unisons as were just as predicted by the genetics of the parents; as subspecies of _Homo sapiens_, they were fully compatible. These normal xenomixes, the _amlati_, to use the Nazzadi word, exhibited a blend of the features of their parents; their skins used both brown-black eumelanin and the darker, blacker voumelanin, giving them a greyish-brown skin colour, and, likewise, their eye tones ranged between the oranges, purples and browns expected from hybridising human colours with the Nazzadi red. They were predictable, understandable.

The _sidoci_ were not. They used neither eumelanin nor voumelanin, but they were not albinos, despite a tendency among the misinformed to call them that. Instead, they used paramelanin, a white-grey pigment which had no apparent history in the hominid lineage. They produced it in vast amounts, enough that the red of haemoglobin didn't affect their appearance, apart from where the flesh was thin, like around the eyes. Mentally, they were strange, detached, and naturally resilient to Aeon War Syndrome. And these peculiar children were, without exception, parapsychic, and parapychic from birth, unlike most; able to manipulate higher dimensional energies from the cradle not through the studied rituals of sorcery, but instead through innate intuition.

It really wasn't a surprise that they were monitored by the New Earth Government, too often taken into care because the parents couldn't cope with a child that could start fires when having a tantrum. People were wary of them, yes, it was true.

Still breathing heavily, he gulped. "No, it's not that." He managed a weak grin, which faded almost immediately. "I think I'm just sort of... tired. Even before all this... um, remember, I just got off a long plane trip. And then... stuff happened"

There it was. There was the thought. She, the girl was related to fear... to the panic, and to the things that had happened.

_grey eyes_

_red fire_

_drowning in fluid_

He shook his head, and shuddered. Nothing.

"What are you doing with her?" he asked quietly.

There was no answer. The reason for this lack of response was that the entire room shook, as a terrible noise rang out. It was not some bestial roaring, some tentacle slobbering, some profane slobbering. It was a single, pure, perfect note, than sang out, and died away, leaving its aftertones to reverberate. The entire Geocity was ringing like a bell, the dome structure humming from the impact which had punched through ten kilometres of dirt and concrete and armour to hit it.

Another.

And another.

The forth was enough to crack the Geocity, as a fragment of darkness broke from the roof, to crash down with a tremendous impact into the ground, crushing buildings and trees as it cut into the weak earth.

Far, far above, Asherah paused. It had breached the shielding, prevented any escape. It was free to do what it wished, at its leisure.

A chorus of alarms was screaming, children wailing in futility into an unforgiving night. The entire room was slanted at an angle, and the motion could be seen, because the hovering platforms had stayed in the same place. Slowly, with the agonising paucity of motion of vast inertia, one of the feed cables from the ceiling gave way, and gravity did the rest. It slammed into one platform, sending exosuited figures flying like dolls across the room and continued on its inexorable path straight towards Shinji.

He barely had time to even see it, to turn his head towards the crash of the other platform, before, suddenly, the light was obscured by a vast, titanic mass that oozed and dripped. The boy stared, in shocked horror, splattered in dark fluid which was chill, too chill, against his skin, lit in a sudden harsh white light.

The hand of the Evangelion was in the way, having taken the blow on its forearm. The containment fluid still bound it to the pool, thick strands of glutinous fluid chaining it to where this drowned idol rested, but it had overcome both it, and the broken bonds that dangled limply from the arm of the leviathan.

Shinji whimpered, as another ice-cold mass splattered down on his head. Slowly, slowly, the arm receded, squelching back into the containment pool.

"What happened? Report."

"The Evangelion moved!"

"It broke the bonding attached to its right arm, and got out of the RCL!"

Ritsuko wiped her face against her lab coat, and coughed heavily, spitting out the goo. "Impossible!" she yelled, when her mouth wasn't filled with chilled mucus. "The entry plug hasn't even been inserted yet! And neither have the D-Engines! It has no power! It can't do this!" she added, in direct contravention of the evidence of her own eyes.

There was a gurgling noise from the right of Shinji, a coughing gasp that was pathetic in how quiet it was. He looked to his right.

The tank of orange fluid was broken, shattered by the shrapnel from the impact against the hand of the Evangelion. The girl within was propped against the wall, sitting limp in the small amount which had not spilled forth across the floor. Fresh lacerations marked her pale skin, the red of haemoglobin completely unexpected in its intensity compared to her seeming-anaemic skin. She was drooling a thin trickle of the fluid, chest straining – an impressive one, thought Shinji, and he hated himself for thinking that – but not breathing. Her one eye was impassive, neutral, shocked.

Picking himself up, he carefully made his way, in a sort of crouch-run across the stained floor, where the orange liquid from the tank and the dark containment fluid intermingled, to the tank. The material had broken cleanly, fortunately, so he was able to get in to... do what? He had been operating on reflex. He lifted her out, the orange liquid seeping into his trouser legs, which was at least warmer than the containment fluid, and lay the slick body down on a clear area of floor. She pawed at his chest, gurgling slightly, eye filled with pain. The recovery position made sense, but...

"We need to get the LCL out of her lungs," gasped Misato, as she tried to get up. She had the advantage that she only had her face exposed, the heavy combat armour sealed around the neck. She had the disadvantage that she had been hit in the face by a large globule of the constraint fluid, and so was almost unrecognisable, a pair of eyes only revealed through effort. "Broken ribs... won't be able to expel it on her own."

The medical team rushed in, and took her from him, threading some kind of tube down her throat. He was sure that he could hear a gurgling whimper, as he stared down at his hand. The reddish-orange fluid, the LCL, was a darker shade of red, stained with blood. His hand began to shake, before clenching into a fist.

"What is this!" he shouted, at the wall where his father's face had been. "You really expected someone in that state to pilot?"

Gendo's face appeared. The impact had obviously heavily damaged the calibration sensors... or maybe his arglasses; either way, it was off-centre, the gap in the image no longer aligned with where the Evangelion was. He flickered slightly, too, a metallic buzz in the voice a sign that the communications were not functioning perfectly.

"No." The tone remained neutral, but there was, finally, an undercurrent of disapproval, of contempt. "I expected you to pilot. The fact that I have to do this to her, to put her through _this_..." was that anger in his eyes? "...is entirely your fault."

"I'll do it, then," snapped back Shinji. "I'll do it!"

The neutral tone was back. "That was all I wanted," Gendo Ikari said, as his glitched image vanished again.

"All right," called out Ritsuko. "Abort Profile RA, resume previous profile." She glanced at Shinji, eyes narrowed. "We need to get you ready... Major Katsuragi can escort you, and also explain what we want you to do." She glanced at her friend, still covered in the containment fluid. "You'll want to get that cleaned off," she added, with a hint of a suppressed smile.

Silently, Gendo watched, as his son was escorted out, along with everyone not fully exosuited left the room, in preparation for the ultraviolet wash that would free the Evangelion from the glutinous containment fluid. He waited.

"Representative Ikari."

The man lent forwards, concern on his face. "Rei," he said.

There was a pause. Then;

"Yes." The word was pained, croaked out.

"Your opinion?"

"No deviation."

"Good." Gendo paused. "Why did you not..."

"It was necessary. The Harbinger must be eliminated. You have made this clear."

"Yes. Yes." The man folded his gloved hands. "Rei, I would like you in Unit 00. I do not intend to launch, but we cannot risk the failure of _this_ option. We will not have time. It is superior to the alternative."

"Understood."

Gendo sat back, fingers steepled. Those who knew him would have been exceptionally surprised to see the expression of puzzlement on his face. Puzzlement, tinged with perhaps even a hint of worry.

_He should not have responded like that to her. I know that he is not that sensitive, and he has never seen her before... and the chromatic aberration is such that no other such connections should be made._

_Perplexing._

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Shinji looked down, and flexed his hands, running them over each other. This 'plug suit' really wasn't much more than a glorified drysuit. Apparently there wasn't time to get him a proper one, whatever that meant. Biting his lip, he thought acerbic thoughts about people who could drag him across the world with very little warning, bypassing all the normal permits to travel, but couldn't even remember to get a proper... was costume the right word? Probably not, but he was going to use it until he felt better about the whole thing.

He had a sudden feeling that he might be using it for a long time.

"Okay," he said out loud. "Let's go over it again."

An image of Misato appeared on the wall of the entry plug, the capsule-like thing where the pilot sat.

"Certainly," said the Major, voice calm. "We're going to begin by activating the Evangelion. The cylinder begins by flooding with LCL. Remember, you can breathe it, despite what your body tells you. Just empty your lungs of air and try to stay calm... and try not to throw up or anything."

Shinji's breaths became more rapid.

"Don't do that," snapped Ritsuko on a second window. "Don't hyperventilate. We don't want you to..."

"Well, I'm sorry," the boy responded, running a hand through his hair, "but I'm just about to drown..."

"You won't drown."

"... but it's going to feel like it, okay. And so I think I'm allowed to be a bit..."

"He's getting worked up," muttered Misato. "Flood the plug before he talks himself into a panic."

Ritsuko, standing next to her, nodded, and gave the orders to the technicians.

"... and I've never done it before, and I don't even know... argh!"

"See, that wasn't so bad," Misato said a while later.

She received a glare in return.

"I did tell you to let all the air out at once."

The glare continued. "This stuff is vile! Like metal and oil and... bleargh!" He continued in a softer voice, "I feel sick."

"Well, man up," snapped Misato. "If you're sick, you're the one who's going to have to put up with it floating around you." She was silenced by a flap of a hand.

"Okay, Shinji," said Ritsuko, forced patience in her voice, "but we have more important matters at hand. Just stay calm." She bought up an AR window. "Begin the first connection."

Shinji felt a sudden wash of static run across his skin, a crackling, buzzing feeling that made his neck tingle. The tingly feeling was spreading, itching, running along under his skin, even as the babble in his ears from the command staff began to... jump, skipping words, like a glitched music file. Red, blue, green, yellow; all the colours of the spectrum danced before his eyes, swirling and interweaving.

It was horribly disorientating. Shinji closed his eyes, and focussed on his breathing, the thick swirls of LCL harder to breathe than air. Maybe there was a trick to it; if there was, he didn't know it.

At least the itching seemed to be dying down.

"How is it?"

"The pilot's body remains intact. Vitals are elevated, likely from stress. No abnormal brain patterns." Maya Ibuki looked up at her mentor, the cable snaking from the back of her exposed skull into the chair bobbing. "He's still alive. And physically intact, too. Your predictions on the necessary qualities for a candidate were correct. Shall I connect the D-Engines?"

Ritsuko nodded once. "Do it." She paused. "Monitor the synchronisation ratio if the Evangelion achieves stage 3. If it goes above ninety percent or dS/dt exceeds three percent per second, abort immediately. We don't want another repeat."

"Yes. Acknowledged and logged" Maya moved her hands through the three-dimensional matrix before her.

A complex spiral appeared in the air before her. Consisting of two sine functions around a central axis, the projection resembled a double helix more than anything. As they watched, the two lines rotated around the axis, moving closer.

"Synchronisation is 32... 26, no, 39%. Stabilising... 31.3%." She made a complex gesture, leaning forwards, and smiling. "Yes, we're holding at 31.3%. dS/dt is zero, plus or minus 0.8%."

Ritsuko stared at the graph, almost hoping for it to be wrong.

"That's... how is it at that level? I didn't... but that's not going to be enough." She shook her head. "Is Rei in Unit 00 yet?" she asked a Nazzadi Operator. The man shook his head.

Maya suddenly squeaked.

"What?" snapped Ritsuko.

"Spike!" was the answer, the younger woman grabbing onto the arms of her chair, back arching, words spoken through clenched teeth. "We've... DMIN stable," she let out a shuddering sigh. "Sorry, doctor."

"What! What just happened?" hissed the blond, biting into a knuckle. "Did we get him out in time?"

Blinking rapidly, Maya let out a giggle. She swallowed. "Sorry, doctor," she said, blinking heavily. "Feedback. No, no, not that at all," she added, with a wincing grin, even as one hand went to her forehead. "Sudden spike, but it's stable." She shook her head. "46.2 +/- 1.1%. And it's holding." There was a pause, as she, and the other Operators, ran checks. "Harmonics are steady and strong. Vital signs are still strong. No mental contamination, as of yet." The other woman grinned up at Ritsuko. "I'd celebrate more, but we were always going to manage it, weren't we?"

Ritsuko gazed down, suddenly feeling ancient. "Yes, of course," she said, her steady voice concealing a hollowed out interior. She supposed it was nice to have someone who trusted her that much. It was a change, certainly. "We're ready," she said to her Director of Operations, maintaining the same, professional tone. "We should do this quickly," she added, in a softer voice, so that no-one, apart from Maya, heard her.

The Major nodded, once. "Prepare for launch!" she ordered, as she opened a window to the Representative. "Sir? Authorisation?"

Gendo Ikari nodded, once. "Yes. A Harbinger-class entity could doom us all."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The itching was getting worse, as he felt the pressure from the seat, as the Evangelion was moved into position. The dark, goo-like liquid that had been containing, or more accurately, had _meant_ to be containing, the Evangelion had suddenly turned into a proper liquid under the UV light, draining out through the locks at the bottom. Now the forty metre biped inched, slowly, agonisingly to the launch chute. A truedome geocity was over ten kilometres below ground, and was widely agreed to be a marvel of modern engineering. What that did, however, make it, was rather inconvenient to get in and out of.

So they were going to use a system designed to launch missiles on a ballistic trajectory, before the motors kicked in, to get him out of here.

That really wasn't reassuring to Shinji. But, frankly, so many things were worrying him right now that he had regrouped at fatalism. His father had been right, sadly. He was probably going to die either way, if they were desperate enough to throw a teenager in some kind of war machine, so at least this way he could do something about it. If only to speed it up. Sure, it was fatalistic, but it was also slightly reassuring.

Not very, though.

And in all honesty, he wasn't fatalistic about the fact that he could feel the prickling pins-and-needles running under his skin, like ants. But, considering he was about to be launched up a giant railgun-assisted launch chute, to try to kill an alien monstrosity, it wasn't like it was too much of an issue.

He ran over the instructions that they had given him for control. He just had to concentrate on the actions he wanted the mecha to perform. Think about it, and the systems would interpret his own muscle memory into motion.

Well, that seemed easy enough. Just think about it, and it would do it. How hard could it be...

Shinji Ikari suddenly found that the kind of accelerations that the launch system imposed not only made thinking about one thing hard, but also made breathing a challenge. His head spun, forced backwards into the rest, suddenly appreciative of the high, stiff collar-thing on the entry plug, as the blood rushed into his legs, making his vision dim, everything turning grey The sensation of the LCL, which suddenly felt like it was tar, made him feel unclean, within and without. The way that it forced its way into his lungs and his stomach, bloating them and packing them to capacity made him want to throw up, to cough up his lungs.

Such a relief was impossible. Muscular contractions were nothing compared to the forces behind this machinery.

And then there was light; sudden, blinding light.

* * *

~'/|\'~


	3. Chapter 2: Lusus Naturae

**Chapter 2**

**Lusus Naturae / What bliss even in hope is there for thee?**

**EVANGELION**

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"_Perhaps one of the greatest scientific ironies of the twenty-first century parallels its equivalent in the twentieth. Just as special relativity was founded around the fact that the speed of light was the same in all inertial frames of reference, that not all things were relative, so has arcane theory removed the magic from the arcane. The pseudo-reactionless drive of the A-Pod, the infinite-energy-finite-power from the D-Engine, the discovery of variant r-state materials and their properties, and, of course, the systematic categorisation of sorcerous procedures; though they all have reaped their toll in the lives and sanity of researchers, we have, nonetheless, progressed. And the reason for this is our extelligence, our culture, our capacity to transfer data and preserve it past the one who devised it. Society is what defines humanity; the laws against the Tainted are concrete proof of this. And if the Aeon War has taught us anything, it is that the survival of all of us outweighs the survival of any one of us."_

Sheng-ji Yang,  
"Life in a Maltheistic Universe", 2089

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**August 20th, 2091 CE**

"Damn it, he's starting to fade. Increase the mLCL-ST-01 percentage feed on the drip to sixty percent."

The voices echoed out of a dark, empty space. This was not just the void, no mere absence of light. This was an impossibility of light. It was not that there was no light here, it was that light, as a concept, was undefined.

"Mental contamination! We've got... yes, animaneural contamination in the three primary components of the waveform."

"But will he survive?" The woman's voice paused. "No, that's not the right question. Will he survive, and still be human? It would be problematic to have to get another RTE exemption, and would induce severe issues with our progress."

There was a studied pause. "Yes," the first voice responded, eventually. "The damage... isn't enough to flip the Pennington-Fuyutsuki determinant. It'll heal. Uh... that's the animaneural damage."

"I'm concerned about the physical damage," added a male voice, a faint Nazzadi accent evident in the clipped tones and the slight lilt. "We've got major internal bleeding; we're trying to stem it as best we can, but until we can get the sorcery up and running... well, the problem is, we're having to S-hack the H-L procedure, and that means we've invalidated a bunch of axioms. These concentrations of LCL are interfering with the operation of the medichines, too, so we really do need the arcanotherapeutic assistance. We've waiting for the Magi to compile the rederived version, but..."

The statement was deliberately left hanging.

"Be prepared for the use of Option Zero, if necessary," instructed a fourth voice. "We need him alive, and the increased recovery time and psychological strain is better than the alternative."

"Yes, sir. The sorcerers are in place."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**August 21st, 2091 CE**

Shinji Ikari opened his eyes slowly. A blank white ceiling, curving slightly in a ribbed arch, hung above him. He felt... exhausted. Bone-tired. There were probably more synonyms that were applicable for the situation, but, frankly, even thinking was more effort than it really was worth. Certainly, though, as he tried to move, his arms and legs felt like overcooked noodles; barely responsive and floppy.

"Hello?" he managed, his voice soft, and slightly husky. "Uh..." he trailed off, merely continuing to stare upwards at the same, unfamiliar ceiling. He knew that _something_ must have happened, because this wasn't where he normally woke up, and this wasn't how he normally felt, but, again, to seriously do anything was too much effort.

"Good afternoon, Shinji," said a Nazzadi accented voice, a moderated, gentle voice practically deigned to make one feel comforted. She was speaking to him in Japanese, and it was at that point that Shinji realised that was what he had used.

Oh. That made a lot more sense. Yes, he was ill. That was a much more plausible situation, and would also explain how weak he felt. He just had some kind of fever, and would be over it in a few days. Even if, judging from how he felt right now, it would seem a lot longer.

"You know, Gany," he managed, a faint smile on his lips, "I had a really funny dream. There was this giant robot, and my father, and some kind of monster. It was really weird..."

Shinji Ikari drifted back to sleep.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**August 22nd, 2091 CE**

Gendo Ikari stared over the top of his bridged fingers at the nine other individuals seated around the ring-like table. They weren't actually there, of course; it was impractical and foolish that the Ashcroft Representatives gather in one place, but the q-linked Augmented Reality images fed to his arglasses were a fair simulation. These ten middle-aged men and women, human and Nazzadi alike were private citizens. They held their posts at the whim of the Senate and the President, they were not democratically elected, and they were technically speaking, nothing more than advisors.

And if you believed that, then you might be interested in purchasing some prime real estate in Tibet.

The eleven Representatives of the Ashcroft Foundation were, by most reckonings, some of the most powerful individuals in the New Earth Government. Each one, tasked with managing a broad portfolio, either classified as Geographic, or Conceptual, had massive, wide-ranging authority and influence over the NEG, and, though they might not be able to tell a Minister or the President what to do, their "suggestions" were disproportionately influential.

Europe. Asia. Africa. North America. South America. Oceania. Finance. Research. Ethics. Society. Oversight.

Was there any wonder that it was seriously argued among political theorists that the NEG was not purely democratic, but instead possessed a technocratic state-within-a-state that influenced, though did not control, the primary government?

One might wonder how such a group, a private, not-for-profit organisation, no less, had garnered such power. This was not some unrealistic, corporatist dystopian future, and the megacorps and the IPcorps were quite firmly under the control of the NEG; it was not about to let them enjoy things like "extraterritoriality"... and yet Ashcroft did. The roots of this lay back at the early years of the century, and the revolutions in the sciences which had produced arcanotech and bought sorcery into the public eye, but, fundamentally, it came down to one thing. He who controls the arcane, controls the planet.

Or, to put it another way, knowledge was power. And power begat more power.

"Gendo Ikari," said South America, leaning back in her chair, "so _nice_ of you to actually make time to see us." Her chisel-like teeth were exposed, as she smiled in a not-completely-friendly way.

_Madesky Yugundi oy Jenufabrikati oy Brazilia-Twi oy Herena vy Representy vy Terra_, thought Gendo, keeping his expression neutral as he stared at the Nazzadi with the electric blue hair. _This was going to be fun._

"I have been dealing with the aftermath of an assault on London-2 by a Harbinger-level threat," he said back, calmly. "As has Deputy Representative Fuyutsuki. It was necessary to deal with the civil authorities before I could spare the time to report to the Council in person." He paused. "You have all, of course, received relevant data."

"Of course," said Oversight, leaning forwards. "But, Ikari, I think you can see why we might want to consult with you in person. You did, I might point out, authorise the deployment of a capital grade arcanocyberxenobiological organism... no, I might add, make that _two_ authorisations, even if one did not go ahead... and, as _you_ of all people are aware, the Evangelion Units are not exactly the most _stable_ of weapons platforms."

Gendo bowed his head slightly. _This is all part of the mummery. Oversight is compromised; they will pose no threat._ "Yes. The deployment followed the full necessary procedures; as per the code of conduct, such a deployment was only made at the express request of a NEG Triumvirate-level authority. We were explicitly permitted to use anything which had already been cleared by the Restricted Technology Evaluation teams from the armed forces; the Evangelion Units have been granted such status."

"That is true," said Asia, the elderly woman frowning. Gendo could read her like a book; she had been his superior twelve years ago, and he had served as her Deputy Representative before his transfer. She was an ally on the Council; an almost unconditional one. She was too linked to the original Evangelion Project, though at a step removed, for it to be any other way. It was under her authorisation that the Project had occurred, that original work in Tokyo-3, where the Evangelions had been until the focal point had needed to be moved, away from the growing threat of Leng. "The correct procedures were followed in all aspects," she continued. "Indeed, I would say that Ikari's conduct was immaculate. And... well, an Evangelion Unit has now eliminated... well, it has killed a Harbinger. 'Asherah' is dead. Honestly, I wouldn't say that, even with everything, that such a thing was ever going to be possible."

A woman sitting opposite from him leant forwards, chin propped on her hands in a way which, to an outside observer, would look almost infatuated, but Gendo knew to be anything but. Green-brown eyes behind blue-tinted arglasses were focussed on him. "Yes, it has," said Research. "And yet you continue to obstruct access to the Production Model. What this... incident has demonstrated is that the Units have an undeniable specialised use. Why, then, do you refuse to let the Engel Group... or, indeed, the Achtzig Group, for that matter, cooperate fully with them?"

The man kept his face level, even though, internally, he sighed. It would not be done to be seen to be patronising; this was a careful power play. "It is not my choice," he said. Technically true. "The Director of Science personally feels that the Group, and its component Projects, will function better without the influence of its spin-off Groups; they have gone down different paths of development." Also technically true. "As for why the Production Model is still restricted; that would be because it is still undergoing field-testing. The regime is slowed, because of the status of the pilot and the limits that imposes. Nevertheless, it is proving successful on the Eastern European Front."

"And by that, you mean the age of the pilot," retorted Research. "Oh, wait, no," she added, "the age of the _pilots_. Plural. All of the candidates are underage."

"Among other things, yes," he replied.

"We have obtained a specific RTE exemption, as you well know, Christina," interjected Ethics. "Please, we have more important matters to deal with."

Gendo nodded to the Nazzadi. "Yes. This has been the first encounter of a Harbinger-level threat since..."

"... since Harbinger-1 and Harbinger-2," said Oceania. "Yes. This is indeed alarming. Do you believe that it was summoned, Ikari?"

The Representative for Europe chose his words carefully; as the most capable sorcerer at the table, that was one thing that they would defer to him on. "I do not believe we have enough evidence to state it clearly, one way or another. If it is a summoning... then this is very alarming, as it implies that there exists a group with the resources capable of doing such a complex ritual, that can stay under everyone's radars... or a non-negligible element of the government has been compromised."

By controlling the options one presented, one could always lead people down certain chains of thought. He paused, as the other Representatives shifted. Good. That should have made them uncomfortable. Because what he was about to say was something that he was sure that they had been briefed on, but did not want to admit in public. It would be best to get it out in the open, before he began the main thrust of his arguments, and was forced to justify every little minutia of the events.

"But I would not say that it is impossible that it woke up naturally. And I am sure," he said, leaning forwards, "that you all know what that means."

They all knew what that meant.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**August 23rd, 2091 CE**

Shinji Ikari was somewhat disappointed. In the same way that water was somewhat wet.

It had turned out that it had not been a dream after all. Which meant that everything that had happened... had happened. He, since the first time he had woken up, had been poked and prodded and checked far more times than was really comfortable. All while feeling exhausted, it might be added. And the man sitting beside his bed, clad in a doctor's uniform was here for the purpose of finding out exactly how much he remembered of those events, and, to be frank, whether he was properly sane. The fact that he was not curled up in a foetal ball, babbling blasphemous glossolalia in honour of profane entities which predated mankind and its assumed dominion over the planet, was viewed as a hopeful sign.

"... so, yes, after such an event, you will be expected, for your own mental health, to be honest, to be attending regular meeting with a Health Service-registered psychiatrist," said the man, in response to Shinji's question. "Uh... as for how long, well, that's until I... or anyone else, but I've been assigned to your case while you're resident here. Yes, so, basically, until I feel that you're clear of any trauma, and even then, I would recommend that you keep regular psycheval appointments." He paused. "I'm sorry, I'm babbling. But is that okay?"

Shinji nodded. "Yes, that's okay, Doctor..." but the man interrupted.

"Please, call me Simon. I'm your psychiatrist, and that means you need to feel at ease."

Shinji paused. He would actually prefer a bit of formality, but, on the other hand, that was _oh, forget it. Too much effort to raise it, and it's not like I won't end up calling him that anyway._ "Yes, okay, Simon," he said out loud.

The psychiatrist made a motion on a pad with a blue-covered hand, and looked back up. "Are you feeling okay? Do you want to continue? Your notes specify that you should still be feeling... well, tired, limp, slight clumsiness... I can go on."

The boy felt that, on balance, it would be best if he did not. "No, I'm fine," he lied. "So..."

"Yes, yes. Uh... yes, we had got up to the point where you were in the launch tube. Please, continue... but at your own pace. Remember... we can stop any time."

Shinji swallowed, and continued.

* * *

('_')

* * *

Staring out through the eyes of the Evangelion, Shinji blinked in the twilight sun. Compared to the interior of the launch tube, this light was bright. And it was twilight sunlight, he realised; the clouds had been... shredded, the moisture in the air boiled by the conflict.

"Listen to me, Shinji," said Ritsuko, unconsciously leaning forwards, eyes locked on the image fed into her harcontacts, "the Evangelion is designed to be very simple to control. It uses a direct animaneural interface; the A-10 Clips, that is, the things on your head, the superconducting QUI devices, serve to interpret the signals from your brain. The Eva is humanoid arcanotechnology, so the Operator Extension Side-Effect is in full effect. The AN waveform can be read and translated into movement by the systems onboard."

"But there are..."

"The controls are there for things which don't have a physical analogue in the human body," Ritsuko explained quickly. "The weapons are tried to it, as are sensor controls, and it also serves as a conceptual guide to allow you to retain separate modes of thought between when you want to move your body and when you want to move the Evangelion."

"But then why do they..."

"It's not an accident it uses similar controls to a video game. These aren't the full set; they're stripped down. You aren't trained to deal with the proper set." She paused, for a breath. "And there are pre-existing reflexes we can take advantage of. We checked."

_I... suppose that makes sense_, thought Shinji, marginally annoyed by the refusal of the scientist to let him get a word in edgewise, or, indeed, get to the point.

"You'll thank us the first time the Eva doesn't punch itself in the face when you scratch your nose," added Misato, her face entirely serious. "That... that's happened a few times in tests." She received a glare from Ritsuko for that remark.

_Great. Now my nose is itching,_ thought Shinji. At least the rest of his skin had stopped feeling like there were insects under it, or something. "What... what do you want me to do," he asked.

"You are to engage the Harbinger, and destroy it," stated the Major. "The Evangelion is capable of generating an AT-Field which can be used against the target's own defences."

"A what? How do I do that, then?" Shinji was rapidly becoming convinced that they hadn't thought this out at all, and, really, why hadn't they explained all the things before he got in the Eva?

"It's not something that I can explain to you," Ritsuko said, shaking her head. "Think of the Greek principle of _gnosis_, of the knowledge that can only be acquired through experience. Or, to bring in another example, 'The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao'. This isn't a sorcerous procedure; it's more like something parapsychic. You can't explain it, but you can know how to do it; you were selected for the latent talent."

Shinji swallowed, and nodded, biting onto his lower lip.

Misato glanced sideways and the scientist. "That was... well said," she said. "Rather... mystical for you."

Ritsuko shrugged, and checked that the communications link was off. "I lied," she said. "It's what he wanted to hear. We're not expecting him to actually manifest one first go, after all; he's there to distract the Harbinger, which will have to focus its own AT-Field to prevent the Evangelion from shredding it. Then we can just shoot it in the back, when it's weaker." She turned the communications back on. "Think only of walking," continued Ritsuko. "This is important, Shinji; stay focussed, and only think about walking."

Slowly, ponderously, teetering, the Evangelion lifted a foot. With a crash that broke the road underneath it, jets of water squirting forth from pipes broken directly under the impact, the rather pointy heel smashed back down to earth. Biting his lip, eyes screwed up as he focussed on walking, Shinji nevertheless grinned. "Walk!" he muttered to himself. "Walk! Walk!"

"It's working!" said Ritsuko, eyes wide. _This is really good_, she thought, as the boy ventured another step, muttering the refrain over and over again. That was, of course, when the alarms sounded.

"Spike! Another spike!" came a panicked call from the Operators. Lieutenant Epouvantable, eyes watering, glanced sideways at Maya and sneezed, then flicked her eyes to Dr Akagi. "Uh...my DMIN is stable," she automatically said, after a glance to see that it was so; the check-in procedure was standard among Operators who survived their first few dives, "and the new pattern is holding... uh oh."

Shinji flinched at the noise coming through the communications link, and the already-precarious, teetering step completely failed. As, within the cockpit, Shinji pinwheeled, trying to keep himself... _No, the Evangelion, and, yes, therefore by default, myself_, upright, all that managed to achieve was to damage the until-then-intact buildings to either side.

There were winces all over the control centre; even up on the observation platform, as Deputy Representative Fuyutsuki's palm collided with his forehead with a noticeable smack. Only the father of the pilot who was currently providing a wonderful opportunity for spontaneous urban renewal, remained impassive, eyes locked on the projections on his arglasses.

"Ignore the impact," barked Ritsuko. "What do you mean, 'spike'?"

"I mean 'spike'!"

"Another one. Increase in synch, and corresponding increase in variance," clarified one of the civilian Operators, voice slightly muffled from where she had bitten her lip. "We're up to 59... um, plus-or-minus 2.5% and... well, it looks stable. It's holding."

"But it looked stable the first time," completed Ritsuko, softly. "I want us to be able to force an ejection at any point," she ordered, more loudly. "I do not want it to jam up, or misfire. We will not have a repeat! Abort if he breaks 75%."

Maya nodded. "I've set the Ouranos control system with those priorities," she said, blinking heavily. "The Nerv LITAN should be prioritising runtime towards this."

Ritsuko sighed, and turned back to the main screen, where, despite the patient guidance from Misato, the pilot lacked the fine control to be able to get up.

_Well, it's not surprising,_ she thought. _How long does it take children to learn this?_ She paused, mentally. _That's children with a small 'C'... I really mean 'babies'. Of course, babies don't have an extensive LAI suite... never mind._ She winced as a titanic arm smashed through an apartment complex with a shriek of tortured steel.

"I can't do it!" Shinji shouted. "It's... it doesn't move properly! And my knees hurt!" he added, face screwed up, staring down at his legs... wait, if he was actually face down in the Eva, that meant that the plug was _Argh! Disorientation!_

"Don't think about your body, Shinji!" ordered Dr Akagi, grasping one balled fist in her other palm. "Just think about the Eva!"

It was painful to watch, as, flailing, the Evangelion managed to get one hand under it, sparks and debris flying up from the road as one knee ponderously scraped its way under the main body.

* * *

('_')

* * *

"But at least you were able to achieve that on your own," Simon, as he had insisted, multiple times, on being called, said. "Consider that, with no practice, you were able to manage that." He looked down at the PCPU held in his blue-gloved hands. "According to this, you were much faster at achieving this than any of the other candidates. That's your accomplishment, and something to be proud of."

Shinji winced. "No. Um... this is where it gets..." he paused. "Painful," he said with a shudder. "And fuzzier."

* * *

('_')

* * *

"They've lost contact with the Harbinger!" shouted one of the NEGA officers, whirling towards his superior. "Location of Harbinger-3 is unknown! It... melted away again, into that black wave thing, again."

"Oh no..." breathed Misato. "It can't have..."

The signal from the Evangelion was cut, the main screen blacking out. The panicked reports only served to add to the confusion.

"Massive r-state flux. Identical to what happened on the approach." The lieutenant was streaked with sweat, dripping down his face. "Something big just happened. The Shaws have shut down. We're... we're blind. Faster than the LAI systems could clamp down on the gain." The man looked over at the central control desk. "It's here."

The Major whirled, gazing up at the Representative. "Sir," she began, "Permission to launch Unit 00? Despite its condition?"

"Grabbing exterior feed. Let's see if the ArcSec cams have anything," added another one of the Operators, hands twitching in Augmented Reality projections that only she could see. She turned unseeing red eyes to Dr Akagi. "We have something. Feed requiring authorisation for mainscreen. Autocensor active."

Gendo nodded once. "Permission granted, Major. Load the Evangelion for deployment." Behind the now opaque glasses, his eyes closed. _I am sorry._

The blond scientist frowned, and then shook her head. "Yes, yes," she said, bringing the link from the security cameras, designed for nothing more than petty surveillance, up on the main display.

It may have been a heavily autocensored feed, the image altered to reduce how real it looked and remove flagrant reality violations, and so minimise the instinctual rejection that human minds felt towards things that should-not-be, but it was still clear what was happening. Lieutenant Ibuki gagged at the sight, and she was not alone; faces paled throughout the control centre, at the sight.

The void-black form of the Harbinger, its symmetry broken by the arcanochromatically-enhanced warhead, stood in the middle of a terribly smooth plane, more akin to some kind of amphitheatre, with the outside walls the buildings which were outside the area where the monster had so violated reality again. It loomed over the now-motionless form of Unit 01. The air was crackling with discharges, earthing on anything metallic, giving Asherah a skirt of blue-white brightness.

"Abort launch order for Unit 00," ordered Gendo Ikari clearly, in the silence. "Unit 01 remains intact. Only launch if Unit 01 appears critically damaged."

"We're getting signals back from Zero-One. Just... atmospheric... interference..." the Operator trailed off.

The Harbinger reached one simian arm down, and grabbed Unit 01, yanking it up by its own arm, as it dangled limply. Night-black flesh-substance met the mottled camouflage of the Evangelion, as sparks coruscated across the surface.

* * *

('_')

* * *

Shinji stared up at the blank ceiling tiles. _It was good,_ he thought. _It might be an unfamiliar ceiling, but at least it isn't that thing._ He swallowed. "I was screaming," he said, flatly. "It... it sounded really odd, and it hurt. I mean the screaming hurt because that orange-stuff isn't like air... it's too thick. And the arm hurt too; I could feel it." His eyes locked on the psychiatrist's. "It was like someone was trying to pull my arm out of my socket. And that's not right. I mean, I was just piloting the thing. Why did it hurt?" His voice dropped in pitch. "Why?"

_Seriously, why? I'd like to find the bastard who decided that was a good idea for the pilot to feel the pain of the machine, and... and make them pilot the damn thing themselves! It would serve them right! See how they like it, to have to feel whatever the thing underneath feels!_

"What were your reactions to the Harbinger... to the entity?" said the doctor, after a pause. "It says here... yes, you said earlier that that when you saw it before... nausea, uncontrolled panic, faintness." The man paused. "Did you feel the same this time? If it was different, was it better or worse, in your opinion?"

Shinji glared at him, before his brow wrinkled, as he thought back. _The two monstrous faces stared deep into his eyes... no, into the eyes of the Evangelion, and then there was that burning red sun on the front, filling his eyes. It was like staring at the sun through closed eyelids, only my eyes were open. Just... everything I could see, full of redness_.

His eyes snapped open again, and he saw a look of concern on the older man's eyes. "It was... better," he managed. "It was scary... yes, really, really scary, but it was... it was," the words came out in a rush, "it was scary like a man with a knife is. Um... well, like the idea of a man with a knife is, I haven't actually been attacked by a man with a knife. Like it was a person that was trying hurt me, rather than something which could stand on me without even caring. Like it almost did before."

He fell silent, gazing through the psychiatrist's head and beyond, as if he could see through the mass of stone and steel and concrete to gaze into infinity.

"It wasn't wrong. It was just a thing. And... isn't that wrong?"

* * *

('_')

* * *

Shinji Ikari screamed and screamed. He could feel the chill, almost slick touch of the Harbinger; a clinging, freezing touch, like a frozen, flayed hand _and on earth did that image come to mind of all things?_, and that didn't make much sense. There was armour in the way and everything.

Asherah filled his eyes... his viewscreen. The red light was still bright, but above the false sun, he could see the mask-like shapes, their broken symmetry far too evident up close. They weren't the solid objects they looked like from far away; they were more like some two-dimensional layer of paint over the surface. And yet they had depth. That was the thing. At once, they were a discoloured projection onto the night-black skin-hull of the monster, and full, real objects, floating in the void, rotating yet eternally the same.

And then, again, they were just pained protrusions on a black skin; merely an optical illusion.

"Activate the weapons systems," he heard the Major order, over the communications link. "Listen to me, Shinji," she said, clearly. "I want you to look at the c... at the glowing red thing on its chest. Move the Eva's head to look at it. Don't ask questions. Just think about it, as hard as you can. Do it."

The Harbinger made a noise. It was a noise which lacked a frame of reference to describe. If forced, Shinji would use words like "a kind of crackle, but also a tearing noise, and it was both wetly organic and resonant, like if you were running your finger over the rim of a wine glass made of meat," but, from the vagueness and general incoherence of the description, it was evident that such a thing did not really describe the cohesive whole of the noise.

Moving... yes, he was moving his head to look at the radiant crimson sun mounted in the chest of the thing. Slowly, painfully, the Evangelion's head slipped around.

The Harbinger was staring at him. He could feel it. His skin was itching all over, painfully, and there was some kind of commotion going on in the control room, but compared to everything else, that was meaningless. All he had to do was look.

"Listen, Shinji," said the Major, over the shouting from Dr Akagi and the Operators about another spike, "what we're going to do is fire the head-mounted lasers into the core. When we do that, I want you to try to attack the Harbinger with your other arm. Try to hit it in the red bit. The scientists are claiming that it might be a weak spot. You can do that, right?"

The boy nodded. He could look around, yes, and... well, the attempts to get up had at least proven that he could destructively flail around. There was probably time to feel guilty about the buildings he had demolished later.

_Why is it just holding me? What is it doing?_

"Is the strike force ready?" the Major asked, making sure that the communications link was closed.

"Yes, ma'am," was the answer. "Three wings are zeroed on the coordinates, and an armoured company is locked on the thing's back. They're ready." There was a pause. "And extra NEGA forces have followed Harbinger-3 here, including some M059-X MBTs."

The black-haired woman nodded. "Good. And that's an added bonus." She turned to face her companion. "Are you ready, Rits?"

Ritsuko tucked an errant strand of hair back, and stared back, the blue light of her harcontacts filling her pupils. "Yes," she said, the stress in her voice evident. "Another spike, but... still within safe margins. Just. We're ready, weapons control has been passed over to the Ouranos systems. Get it over with quickly, Misato."

"Right." The woman slammed her hand down on the table. "Fire everything!"

From within the Evangelion, the screen briefly darkened as the four head-mounted lasers fired, the pulsed beams aimed at the dying star on the chest of the monster. These were joined as the missile packs on the shoulders emptied themselves into the Harbinger at point blank range, the guidance chips specifically overridden to arm themselves at less than their normal minimum distance. Asherah recoiled, still holding Unit 01's arm, yanking it further upright, and Shinji winced in pain clutching his other hand to the trapped arm.

That had the bonus effect of bringing the Evangelion's arm in a neat arc, the open palm bashing into the red light and passing through, warping it from a sphere into a broken ellipsoid.

"Good job, Shinji!" shouted Misato, to general cheering from the control room; a celebration which was only accentuated as the impacts from the incoming missiles from the aircraft, and the arcanomagnetically confined high-energy plasma beams and raligun projectiles from the tank formation, which before had been doing nothing, tore off shards of the Harbinger's flesh. The unnatural body sloughed off like molten wax to the impacts of the vECF charges, burning sun-substance and the explosive warheads, splashing to the ground.

A celebration which was halted as, like a ragdoll, Asherah tossed up Unit 01 off the ground, bringing one hand into the chest of the arcanocyberxenobiological organism with an impact which audibly shattered the thickened armoured plates, and, in an egregious violation of the conservation of momentum, sent the massive behemoth flying backwards through buildings in an arc which was _wrong_; too flat for something moving freely, and far too fast for how lazily the Harbinger had moved.

An arc which was halted as it slammed into the grey, crumbling facade of the Victoria Arcology, smashing through the armoured superstructure before, finally, coming to a stop deep inside the building, the impact denting the endoskeleton of the pyramid.

Blinking, thick breaths of LCL surging in and out of his lungs, Shinji blinked in the darkness. There was... there was a vaguely Evangelion-shaped hole that lead out to the brightness of the outside, the greyed, arcanochromatically-tainted walls no match for the momentum of a forty-metre tall titan. They had broken like dust to such an impact, the brittleness shattering like icing.

That was when the pain hit. All up and down his right arm. Turning his head... the Evangelion's head slowly, ever so slowly, he could see the dark ichor oozing out, jammed machinery visible under broken pale flesh under shattered armour. His arm twitched, and the synthorg's arm spasmed too.

_That's not my arm. That's not my arm. That's not my arm,_ he thought to himself, over and over again. Or perhaps he screamed it out loud. How was it possible to tell the difference?

And there was light; the fell radiance of the Harbinger illuminating the wrecked interior of the arcology. It was walking towards him, slowly, placing one tank-sized foot after another, smashing its own way through the entry hole. Screaming, whether in rage, in terror or in pain, for it was not clear, even to himself, he tried to focus on standing up, but he couldn't. His mind jumped around, like there was a swarm of insects living in his brain and under his skin, buzzing and humming from thought to thought without settling on a single one. The Evangelion twitched and convulsed, but no definite motion could happen.

He could hear distant shouting and see the image of the control staff yelling at him, but his mind was filled with the pounding, regular footsteps of Asherah, the harbinger of his fate. The steps beat as one with his panicked heartbeats.

It stood over him, the sun on its chest the fires in which all thoughts are consumed.

In one smooth motion, a hand descended, and plucked out the eye of the Evangelion, crushing the stolen orb like a ripe fruit in its hands.

A fountain erupted from the empty socket.

And then.

Nothing.

* * *

('_')

* * *

"... and that's it," Shinji said, his voice slightly croaky. "I mean, I don't know, maybe I knocked my head on something, but I think I may have just fainted. Of course," he added, a slightly vitriolic note entering his voice, "I suspect the experience of feeling like losing an eye is enough to knock someone out. Maybe. Just maybe?"

The doctor was silent.

"Um..." began Shinji.

"Are you sure you can't remember anything else?" the man said, a slight hint of something Shinji couldn't recognise in his voice.

The boy shook his head.

"Oh, well," the man said, with a shrug. "Well, I expect you'll want to rest again. Either way, I'll be seeing you again, at some point... uh, we'll deal with scheduling later. Remember, if you're feeling uncertain, or having nightmares, or otherwise feeling odd, note it down. Uh... yes," he said, checking something, "you should have my Grid contact details, please, send me a message detailing anything unusual you're feeling."

The boy frowned. "My... my PCPU got broken," he said, dredging out a memory which seemed so long ago, but must really not have been.

"There's a new one by your bedside table," Simon said, his voice calm. "Given that it has a label saying 'For Shinji' on it, I would guess that it's some kind of replacement. By which I mean, yes, it's a replacement. After all, wouldn't it be kind of difficult to do anything without one?" he asked rhetorically. He stood, pushing his chair back against the wall.

"Remember," he said as a parting comment, "tell anyone if you feel at all peculiar, or have any unusual urges or thoughts." The man blushed slightly. "That is, apart from the ones inherent to being a sixteen-year old," he added hastily. "By the reckoning of my profession, they don't really count as unusual. Although if you do feel discomfited or otherwise needing to talk to someone, that is part of my duties. Um."

Shinji ignored the man, and collapsed back onto the bed, staring up at the blank ceiling. One hand reached up to massage his closed right eye.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

In a small blessing, the clouds had cleared, and now the whole of the greater urbanised area was lit in late August sun.

Of course, from the point of view of Misato Katsuragi, the "blessing" component was more appropriately viewed as an "annoyance". Yes, certainly, from an ecological point of view, the fact that it hadn't rained meant that the scrubbers had been able to bond to the arcanochromatic residue from the massive number of variant-electron catalysed fusion weapons, not to mention the tactical-scale warhead that had seen use, but from a personal point of view, it meant that it was getting annoyingly hot inside the hazard suit at the site of the cleanup.

"Misato, you were a frontline soldier," Ritsuko had said, the smile obvious under her transparent faceplate. "Are you sure you just haven't gone soft in your nice Ashcroft placing?"

It may have been true, but as she watched as they manoeuvred the scattered fragments of the armour from Unit 01's arm and torso into the containment vessels, Misato couldn't help but wish that she was in an exosuit, with a nice climate controlled interior, as opposed to just a thick layer of protective material and an air supply that she had to carry around with her.

_Anyway,_ she thought to herself, _I was a mecha jockey. Not a ground-pounder or a sardine. I fought on the bounce, and feel back if things got too hot._

She had to admit, that was a different meaning of 'hot'. But that wouldn't stop her from complaining.

Slumping down to one of the chairs, she flicked through the channels, the image filling her left eye. If they wanted her, they could come get her, she felt. At the moment, nothing required direct military involvement or use of her Advisor status; it was just scientists fussing over the area, and getting in the way of the engineers and the technicians who were actually clearing the place. The colonel the New Earth Government Army had sent to supervise their part of the clean-up looked just as bored as she did. She spared the man a wave, and got an equally lethargic one back.

"... and the main story remains the consequences from the unexpected assault by an unknown extra-normal entity against the London-2 region," reported an almost-foppish-looking _sidoci_, his long white hair artfully styled in a way which was a blatant example of manufactured _dishabille_. "Despite the element of surprise, the primary component of the hostile strike force was quickly isolated, eventually self-destructing to prevent capture by NEG forces. Although the area remains sealed off, the Army and Navy have released footage..."

_flick_

"Casualty results still remain unknown, but they are estimated to be in the..."

_flick_

The woman stood, cape billowing, against a thunder-cloud backdrop. "You fool!" she proclaimed to the square-jawed hero, who stood at the bottom of the tower, red eyes reflecting the lightning in a manner identical to that of an owl. "I have bought him back again, and no one... none at all, shall question my genius. They called me mad! Mad!" Peals of laughter broke out, echoing the thunder.

"You're the fool, Baroness!" the man called back, pointing his gun, a rather nice looking double-barrelled shotgun with a revolver feed and weird sparking machinery on it, at the deranged aristocrat. "That isn't your husband... and _it hasn't been your husband for twelve years!_ He's dead; the thing walking around wearing his skin isn't him! It just thinks it is! It's a _shade corpus_, and, one day, it'll remember!"

The gun roared, as both barrels fired, but, too fast for the eye to track, the Baroness leapt up, the camera panning in to show precisely how the shrapnel tore at her clothing, while leaving her flesh untouched.

"Release the Claw Fiends, Igor!" she shrieked, crouching, nearly naked, on the roof.

"Yeth, Mithrethth, I will do ath you requetht."

_Oh yeah,_ thought Misato. _Meant to look like I'm at least keeping up to date on the reporting of the situation. Plus_ Doom of the Revenge of the Baroness of the Darkness of the West _is old. Seen it before._

_flick_

"... the true heroes of this story have to be a squadron of Engel pilots, from the 3rd European Mechanised, who managed to engage the sole hostile survivor of the blast, and critically damage it." There were four portraits displayed; men and women in their late twenties to early thirties, in full military dress uniform. "First Lieutenant Jenny Intry, Second Lieutenant James Hawass, Second Lieutenant Sarah Athena, and Second Lieutenant Wera Kawimani vy Devora were all killed, as the entity self-destructed, rather than risk capture, but in their actions, they saved uncounted lives." The platinum blond woman bowed her head briefly, then continued. "Genevieve Aristide, the War Minister, has promised a ceremonial state funereal for the four, saying that they exhibited the best of the combined traits of panhumanity."

_Oh my,_ thought Misato. _They actually used Scenario B-22. Oh. Rits is going to be really, really pissed to be letting Engel get the credit. She wouldn't mind so much if it was just the tanks, or even conventional mecha, but the credit had to publicly go to an Engel squadron. Oh dear._

Turning off her optical bypass, she got up, and went to look for the Director of Science. An outburst was _not_ what they needed right now.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Shinji sat back down, breathing heavily. More checks, and they'd finally let him walk around on his own, only being followed by a cat-sized drone, which clung to the ceiling and buzzed if he walked too quickly.

Everything in the hospital was just so colourless and faded. No, not faded. Deliberately stripped of all colour and life; cold and sterile and clinical. The lights were bright and uniform, and the white walls were stark. Even the attempts at decoration somehow only managed to accentuate the fact that this was not an environment which people were meant to be living in, that this place was designed for function over form. And the angles; there was not a single right angle anywhere. Everything was slightly curved, which spoke of the level of security that this place must have, if that kind of structural precaution was necessary. Cold and lifeless; such a _wonderful_ feel for a medical facility.

The environment seemed to match his personal feelings. What was it called? The 'pathetic fallacy', or something like that? Well, Shinji was certainly feeling fairly pathetic. Less so than on previous days; he was, at least, able to move around on his own, thanks to an approval from the psychologist. But he was still bone-tired... what kind of phrase was bone-tired anyway? Are bones particularly famous for their lethargy? Are they the most slothful component of the human body? You would think that, since they're the ones giving rigid structure to the human form, they don't get tired, and never have to rest. It was probably a gross failure of natural selection if the skeleton got exhausted. Seriously, where did languages come up with these things...

They also had said that he might be easily distractible for the next few days.

Either way, he just sat back, and gazed out the window; out at the untouched, rural landscape before him.

Now, actually, he could properly appreciate the marvels of the Geocity. It was unlikely that you could find such an environment on Earth, properly, outside of such managed zones. A miniature sun, and a true one at that, the arcanomagnetically-confined aneutronic fusion reaction burning on the ceiling, rolled across daily, providing a sense of time which was so often lacking in normal arcology sections, where only those who lived on the outer walls got regular access to sunlight. Visible out the window, above the few low-rise buildings was an expanse of green. The dome had to be kilometres across to fit everything inside. There were trees down here; entire forests! There was a lake with... Shinji squinted, an island with a vaguely Greek-looking marble building in the centre. And everything was actual green-green, not tainted by the slightly-off prismatic hues that polluted too much of the surface, despite the attempts at ecological preservation. It was a deliberate attempt, he read, checking Exocerebrum on his new PCPU, to try to recreate what a pre-human ecology would have looked like, as a source and a store of living genetic diversity quite different from the vast genebanks which had, from the start of the century onwards, begun the grim task of cataloguing an ecosystem blighted first by mankind's hungry depredations, and later the horrors of the Arcanotech Wars and the Aeon War.

A flock of birds, bright cyan plumage shining in the man-made sunlight, poured past the window, flowing like an unending torrent. _Hah. There's actually some white ones in the mix, that could be foam,_ Shinji thought. He wondered if they really knew what they were doing, what they were like. And also if they ever flew too close to the sun, and got burned up, or got their brains scrambled by the fields. Maybe there was some kind of system that stopped them from doing it. Maybe they were just left to learn for themselves, and the selective pressures eliminated the ones that didn't.

His thoughts were cut short by the sound of cushioned feet squeaking on the floor, and the ponderous rumbling of something heavy. He glanced down the corridor, to the source of the noise, to see a team of orderlies pushing a cylindrical tube, the top transparent and glimmering with projections.

Wordlessly, Shinji watched as they passed. There was a princess in the crystal coffin. That is to say, there was a girl in the life-support pod. _That_ girl, the _sidoci_ from before.

Her gaze never left his as she was wheeled past, the grey iris wrapped around a pin-prick pupil. Shinji shuddered, icy-cold fingers running up and down his spine. She was almost invisible in the sterile confines of the life-support pod, swathed under layers of fluid-filled tubes and the red of blood stains on despoiled blankets. At least there wasn't the empty socket anymore; it had now been covered by a post-operation protective casing.

But still she stared at him.

_grey eyes  
red fire  
drowning in fluid  
pain_

_nothingness_

Slowly, Shinji's hand crept up to cover his own right eye, massaging it, feeling the spherical shape under the skin of his eyelid. He now knew exactly how that felt.

And then the snow-white girl was gone, and his heartbeat began to slow again. He slumped back down in the seat, suddenly feeling drained again.

_Of course, in the original fairy-tale, didn't the prince... do things to her while she was in a coma?_ the boy thought, with an internal wince. _Yeah... I think he did. Yuck. Yeah, I distinctly remember Gany reading me the story, and then warning me about overly romanticising history. Or something like that. Pretty disgusting, really._ He grinned, a little foolishly. _I think I'd be a much better prince than that._

_What the hell was my father thinking, trying to make her pilot like that?_ He paused. _On the other hand... what the hell was he doing, putting a completely untrained person in that thing? Let's be honest here. I really can't follow the kind of thought processes we're dealing with here. It's possible that he had good reasons for doing it. Apart from the giant monster-thing, of course. The giant-monster thing that wasn't him._

He did not know, and in unknowing, found no relief.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The Director of Operations for Project Evangelion found the Director of Science for the Evangelion Group in one of the sterile tents they'd set up, and, after going through the decontamination process, unsealed her helmet with relief, running a hand through her sweaty hair.

"Heya, Rits," she said. Misato paused, not quite wanting to say anything which might raise the touchy subject, but not sure how to proceed. "Ah, the air conditioning unit," she said, to no one in particular, in the cool air of the tent. "It's really the greatest treasure of mankind. A real scientific success. The power of control over the climate." A quick check revealed that the coffee in the pot was cold; a moment's deliberation decided that putting it in the microwave was faster than making a new pot, and so it was done.

"You finally got the message, did you?" said the blond, with a hint of sarcasm, as she poured over a diagram. "Come over here; I need you to see something. Tune your Eyes to DEMO, by the way," she added.

Flushing slightly as a check of her unit revealed that, yes, she had a missed message, the black-haired woman nevertheless complied.

The diagram was revealed to be a full three-dimensional map of the area filling most of the room, the ground-level hovering about eye-level, tracing the honey-comb of smaller arcology domes underground. The Geocity wasn't shown. That was far too deep for this scale. And marked in flashing red was an almost worm-like trail, which dug in through the grey area of a chromatically-drained region, into the earth, before emerging again. And then there were the craters that pockmarked the area, culminating in one great one.

"Is that?"

Ritsuko nodded. "We've finally been able to piece the full passage of the berserk Unit together," she said, with a sigh. "It's taken almost two days, too. We had major black-box corruption, which made the onboard records unreliable."

"It really did all that?"

"Yes. And Victoria wasn't properly evacuated too, due to the attack on the airport. That would have produced additional casualties, had it not been for the use of the vECF warhead..."

"... you mean, extra casualties caused by us," said Misato, flatly. There was a ping from behind her, as the microwave declared that it was done, but she ignored it.

"Well, yes. We're not responsible for those deaths. That's something that the NEGA has to answer for, not us. Makes everything easier." Misato frowned at that remark. "It does mean less paperwork for you," pointed out Ritsuko, which only deepened the frown. She waved a hand. "Never mind. What I was saying is... well, look at the passage. The fall through the weakened superstructure was unavoidable, but it makes everything more difficult. The fight between the Eva and Asherah collapsed several bunkers, and the damage to the endoskeletal structure of the pyramid is worrying."

"Yep. I've seen what they're having to do to save it. And," Misato added, "having to dodge falling debris. I hate working in colour-drained regions."

The scientist nodded. "I know what you mean. It's the way that everything goes crumbly." Ritsuko sighed, looking up from the diagram on the table, and Misato could see, with surprise, the redness around her friend's eyes and nose. "What kind of victory is this, anyway?" she added, in a worryingly emotionless tone of voice.

Misato paused, before replying. "Ah," she said, in a soft tone. "I was wondering why there wasn't anyone else in here." Ritsuko felt a hot mug pushed gently into her hands. Without taking a look, she took a swig.

It almost instantly was deposited back in the cup. "Bleargh!" the blonde declared. "Yuck."

"It's just coffee," said Misato, holding her half-empty mug, with a frown.

"Yes. It's coffee. It's so much coffee that you seemed to forget to put any water in. I should know never to let you..." The scientist let out a bubbling giggle, a slightly sick sounding noise. "You just heated up that pot, didn't you?"

"Yes. Why?"

"So did I. Several times."

"Oh. How long has it been brewing?"

"Since yesterday, some time."

"Oh." Misato paused, as the other woman's words caught up with her. "Oh. Ooooh." She sighed. "Rits? How long have you been here?"

"Mmmmph," was the response she got; a somewhat predictable one, based on the fact that the blond's mouth was full of the overly strong coffee.

"When was the last time you slept?" A slightly weary note entered Misato's voice.

"Ah." Ritsuko thought. "Um. The night before Harbinger-3 arrived," she said, in a small voice.

Misato sighed. "That explains it, then. You've been hopped up on EOE for... four nights now." The black-haired woman paused. "Okay... that's it. You know it doesn't replace sleep properly. You've known it since university."

"Don't bring that up. Completely different circumstances."

"No, I'm going to do that, because after that time you spent a week up, and we had to drag you to hospital before you killed yourself from a stroke, you promised me that you'd never do it again!"

"Wait a moment!" retorted Ritsuko. "You made the same promise after I had to take you to have your stomach pumped, and how long did that take to be broken?"

"Six w... not the point! That was for fun, not for w..." Misato took a deep breath. "No. I've had sleep. I'm not going to shout at you." She let out that breath. "Why are you doing this, Rits? You're not so vital you couldn't have had one night of sleep in the last 4. Even four hours, or something. And I know you do know how to delegate, even if you don't like to." She paused. "Come on, drink your according-to-you vile coffee."

Ristuko slumped down, into a seat. "I had to make a report to the Council of Representatives yesterday," she explained , in a small voice. "Oh, that went fine, don't worry," she reassured her friend. "Research... Representative Egger, was unpleasant, but she always is. No, it's not that." She winced, as she took another mouthful, blinking heavily as she swallowed. "But I passed the Twin Obelisks on the way in to Headquarters. They'd put new names up."

Misato cursed under her breath. _Of course_, she thought. _That's it. She gets like this when she goes there. Add that to the lack of sleep... yeah, makes sense._

The Twin Obelisks were a fixture of any major Ashcroft Foundation; a way of commemorating researchers killed, incapacitated, or sectioned by their work. It was a tradition not without precedent. The eponymous Teresa Ashcroft, who had laid the founding grounds for arcane theory, although, in truth, her role was somewhat exaggerated; she was a manifestation of a wider school of thought, as the flaws in the Standard Model and Quantum Mechanics became evident, at the start of the 21st century, was the first name on the White Obelisk. That one marked those driven to insanity by knowledge of that-which-man-should-not-know. Her supervisor, Simon Yi, was the second. And then was the Black Obelisk, which marked those lost to death or irrevocable and absolute inhumanity; both fates were far too common for those who tested new sorcerous procedures or arcanotechnology.

It wouldn't be fair to say that the former was for theoreticians and the latter for experimentalists. But it wouldn't be utterly inaccurate, either. And it was arguable which one was worse. For at least one granted a drink from the river Lethe; the unknowing that comes from the unbeing of death or loss of self, while all the other could offer was the fractured existence of a broken mind.

Ritsuko glanced up at Misato, with reddened eyes. "I wonder which one I'm going to end up on," she said, in the same flat voice. "It's not going to be long. Just a matter of probabilities. Over half my class are there, by now. I'm already beating the odds."

"Now, come on," Misato said, worry entering her voice. "It's not like everybody dies, or goes insane. Look at," she paused, "well, I know you don't like him, but Dr Miyakame from Engel was on the original Project, and he's still okay."

There was a short, bitter laugh. "Is he?" She shook her head. "And even assuming that's true, and I don't think it is, well... look at it. Him, Sylveste from Achtzig, and the Representative. Those three. The only three able to pass for sane, and still alive, out of an original Project of nine specialists." She glared at Misato through narrowed eyes. "Dr Hathenep... torn apart by an uncontrolled prototype. Dr Vandebough... committed after a mental break that left him claiming that he could master n-dimensional terrain. And the murders, of course. And... and, well, the boy we just put in Unit 01; you're aware of what happened to Yui Ikari. And, for that matter, Kyoko Zepplin Soryu."

"I am," said Misato. Her voice softened. "It killed your mother, too, I know."

"Ha!" Ritsuko paused. "Yes, you'd almost think there was a reason I wasn't mentioning her among the survivors!" she snapped, looking away.

Her friend's face remained calm, not rising to the bait. "Ah," the Major said. "Yes, it seems that you're not in a fit state to keep on working. You've been awake for too long, and you're going to start making mistakes if you don't get some proper sleep. Formally, in my capacity as Director of Operations for Project Evangelion, I'm instructing you to call it a ni... call it an early afternoon. I want you to go for a psychological check-up, too; staying up this long, even on EOE, isn't healthy."

Ritsuko deflated. "Yes," she said, in a small voice. "Yes, that makes sense." She paused. "Thank you," she said, softly. "Yes. You can drive me to the Clinic in the Geocity; you're picking up the Third Child."

"I am? Well," Misato clarified, "I know I am, but I am _now_?"

"I did send you a message telling you that he'd passed the physicals and now the psychologicals."

"Yes. Well..." and the way that she tailed off said it all. "How is he?"

"Physically, no external wounds. Mentally?" Ritsuko gave a somewhat laconic shrug, which turned into a slump. "Well... his memory is somewhat confused." She raised a hand, to forestall the outburst. "His memory _of the events_ is somewhat confused."

She failed. "Mental contamination?" asked the Major, eyes flashing.

"Some. Negligible. I've heard it's nothing to worry about."

The other woman relaxed. "Oh, right. It's... well, I've looked at Unit 01's history, and, well..."

"Yes, I know. But, no, it seems to be fine."

Misato relaxed. "Okay. Come on, then. The Foundation was... nice about getting me a replacement car," she added, with a smirk. "It's a Ventek SF-47-X." At Ritsuko's empty and somewhat weary look, she grinned wider. "Oh, it's good. And it's fast. And I have it. Well, at least until the insurance comes in, and I suspect that won't be too long. Might even be fast-tracked."

"It's really not charming to gloat about how the systems fast-track you," sighed Ritsuko. "Even if... yes, even if it is true. And I don't need another explanation for how you managed to get both the company discount and the military discount. I understood it the ninth time. And don't drive too fast. And don't crash. In fact," she added, as a thought struck her, "let the autopilot drive. I... uh, I need to talk to you about... um... things."

"What kind of things?"

"_Important_ things."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

There was a separate investigation going on; one on a much, much smaller scale. In a grey, cracked and crumbling hallway, smothered in a thick layer of dust and ash, figures in bright yellow hazmat suits were standing around, while a cluster of remote-controlled drones mapped the area.

Every citizen should have been able to recognise who they were, from the small, geometrical logo on their arms. They were from the Office of Internal Security. The OIS. They had marched in, and taken over this investigation from the Federal Security Bureau almost immediately, the suspect circumstances of the attack overriding the FSB's authority over terrorism and actions on interarcology territory.

And, scattered around this lifeless, colourless environment, so rapidly succumbing to entropy, there were the... manikins. It wasn't right to call them people. They weren't that. For starters, they were dead, but it wasn't that. Even if they were 'merely' dead, such a dehumanising term would not have been used to describe their mortal remains. But these _things_, these brittle grey figurines were best not acknowledged as something which was once human. Because if that was done, then the mind fixed on those hollow, fragmented recesses which were once eye sockets, those glimmers of white enamel in the disintegrating lips, and the streaks of bone visible under colour-drained clothing and powdery flesh. Normally, there was something about a dead body which could only be described as 'honest'; as in life, they were in death, cooling meat revealing the marvels of natural selection that had led to their life. And from death, nature returned, the body breaking down into the ecosystem.

There was nothing natural about this.

There was the hiss of an aerosol can, as another manikin was coated in a substance which bore most resemblance to varnish. This was a crime scene, even if it had been thoroughly ruined, and they were still going to follow procedure, because there still was a chance that they would be able to find out exactly what had gone on here. A very slim chance. The Office of Internal Security, as an organisation, was somewhat displeased by the fact that the crime scene had been contaminated by the close proximity detonation of a one-kilotonne variant-electron-catalysed fusion warhead. The only reason that it was only somewhat displeased was that the OIS did not get angry, as a statement of official policy.

That did not, however, prevent individual agents getting bloody furious, as long as they did not do so in an official capacity.

"Fucking army fuckwits and ArcSec morons and their fucking clumsy counter-intrusion attempts," swore Agent Kain, pacing up and down, waving her hands in the air.

The only other woman in the back of the van sighed, and deactivated her harcontacts, her orange irises returning to normal. "Another problem, Samea?" she asked.

"You better believe that there is!" was the snapped back response. "I haven't been able to get a full list of all the counter-intrusion procedures that the police and army teams set up in the databases... after four days! And there are active ghosts... hidden, I might mention. I was just trying to bounce some requests from a standard civilian PCPU... in emulation, of course... then dissect the countermeasures. My ghosts got fucking targeted! My goddamn ghosts! They have high-grade Limited Artificial Intelligences specialised in electronic warfare running on the local arcology Grid that are attacking any attempt to probe them. And tailoring their responses to how smart the intrusion method is. They've been giving me a dummy-network for almost two days!" She slammed her hand into the side of the wall, making the van rock slightly. "That is _taking the piss_, Mary!"

Mary Anderson winced, shaking her head. "Ouch. Well, assuming it didn't spread any further..."

"I'm not an idiot. Of course they were boxed."

"... just checking. Then... you should probably get a high-end specialist team in." The _amlati_ paused. "This is serious, if they can trick your ghost LAIs. Put the request into the Yard."

Samea sighed, an angry noise through clenched teeth. "You know what the worst thing is. I didn't even notice them. And I've warned the other analysts. We've been falling for this dummy dataset. Two days down the drain." She stomped back to her seat, collapsing back into it. "This entire incident is a nightmare. Ruined scene. Complete systems lock-out. This is going to be taught to cadets as a nightmare scenario. I mean, fuck it, this is the plot for some stupid film, not real life."

"I hope I'm the quirky intelligence analyst who guides the actual hero to his eventual success," Mary said, brightly. "Ooh! I might even get a promotion to love interest. I hope the hero is the quiet sensitive sort. In glasses. Hmm. Maybe not glasses. What genre do you think we are?"

"What?" Samea squinted at her. "What are you talking about?"

"In the film."

She received a glare back.

"Well... I'm just saying, I mean, if he's an action hero, then glasses aren't appropriate, while if he's more of an intellectual, then... arglasses for the win." She paused. "Okay, okay," she continued, in a darker tone. "Look. I've been getting no more success than you have. It took long enough to secure the site, that none of the brains are any use. I've been trawling them... nothing of use. Too much decay to be able to get anything more than base response functions, even in the ones which weren't greyed by the colour, or boiled by the blast. The people were _anfrazzadi_, _nazzadi_, or _amlati_... no _sidoci_ as of yet, but the sample size is small enough that it could just be probabilities that they didn't show up, and, anyway, they're watched heavily enough that, unless you want a PP, you don't want them, because they draw attention. That's basically all I could grab so far. And you could tell that by looking at the bodies. So... nothing," she concluded.

[New sample submitted,] stated the pleasant voice of her LAI.

"Oh!" Mary said, spinning her chair back around, and reactivating her harcontacts. "Let's see what you have for me, baby... hmm. Male... Nazzadi for certain." She checked the attached form. "Yes, knew so. I've always wondered why the Migou flipped the symmetry of the Nazzadi body," she said, out loud. "Of course, me, I take after Mum in that."

"I really needed to know that," muttered Samea.

Mary made a disgusted noise. "Too much decay. Won't be grabbing anything of use from the cerebrum intact. And this one was frozen as soon as they found it, too. Useless and annoying. I much prefer working on live brains. It's much easier than trawling dead ones. Hmm... actually, no, the just-dead are the easiest; neuron activity tends to induce errors, unless you get permission for a destructive map, and they tend to bitch about doing it to live subjects." She made a few gestures. "Zombie, start the destructive trawl," she instructed the LAI. "No... abort that," she corrected herself.

"What is it?" asked her colleague.

Mary spun back around. "It's just... well. Too much of this investigation is going wrong. The body samples are all ruined, the brains are rotten, there's no live witnesses, and that's even before the arcanochromatic contamination."

"We're all thinking that, I'm sure. I'm certainly finding it goddamn suspicious. It..." Samea clacked her teeth together, while looking for the right words, "... it _doesn't_ match, frankly. On one hand, we have this elegant, precise attack, which subverts ArcSec, the local security networks, seals them off..."

"... and on the other hand, we have a disparate group with no shared backgrounds, using unregistered, untraceable, brand-new, but light sharders and machine pistols... which isn't enough to reliably do stuff to people in ArcSec type armour, let alone proper armour. But does, very well, kill civilians." Mary sighed. "The former seems to have had a goal. The latter seems to have just killed people."

"But even that doesn't make sense. Why waste the kind of assets you'd need to get all those unregistered, unchipped weapons into a secure airport? You'd need to have subverted security to get them in, and we haven't background-linked any of the civilian ones to have the kind of distribution network you'd need to pull that off. Seriously, I'd swear that none of them knew each other before this. I've seen the checks on their social networks."

"You mean the summaries."

"Well... yeah. But the civilian group must have been a decoy for the ArcSec group," Samea said, slowly. "It's the only thing that I've heard that makes sense. But... it doesn't feel right."

"I know. According to the reports we have, the civilian group attacked first, and then the ArcSec group opened fire. But if they're there for an objective..."

"Then what the fuck were they doing? And what did they want?"

"I have no idea." Mary paused, flicking her attention back to the LAI. "Go on, Zombie. Start the trawl."

The same questions, and chains of thought – except from divergences into film preferences, which were much more varied on an agent-to-agent-basis – were being repeated all throughout the local OIS. And none of them had any answers.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Shinji sat in the atrium of the clinic, swinging his legs. The new clothing they'd given him, as apparently, they'd lost his old set, was still rather stiff and had that slight rigidity that wouldn't come out until it was washed at least once.

He _hated_ it when they were like this. He would have changed, but... well, he didn't actually have any other clothing on this continent. He'd lost his hand luggage at the incident at the airport, and hadn't even had the chance to pick the other baggage up before the attack. There had actually been some important stuff in there.

At the moment, he was engaged in an epic quest to try to recover his muse. The Limited Artificial Intelligence had been linked to his now-sadly-deceased personal CPU, and thus had been lost. Naturally, there were back-ups; it wasn't like the vast repositories of data that any human being generated or obtained in day-to-day life were actually stored on a device that could be held in a hand, or, in some cases, folded up like paper. The limits of information storage capacity imposed by quantum mechanical effects were such that a standard PCPU couldn't have held a fraction of what anyone generated, stored, or retained. Each device was little more than an terminal for a vast, hidden network of measurably more complex machinery; the quantum computers and data archives, which disposed of their vast quantities of waste heat in D-Sinks, D-Engines run in reverse, unseen by those that used them.

And, unfortunately, those data stores were, for him, in Japan.

The problem existed on two levels. Firstly, there was the simple issue of data transfer; the Grid was not the open, free environment of the pre-AW1 Net. That had been murdered by the invading Nazzadi fleet; its open, amorphous nature too susceptible to assault by a foe who knew what they were doing. And the Migou had passed only a fraction of their systems knowledge to the Nazzadi; even now, units engaging the forces of the Yuggothian fungoids had to physically isolate the communications systems from the rest of their onboard computers, and work under the assumption that any code which was not encrypted by a one-time pad, or by quantum cryptography, was vulnerable. Hence, the Grid was isolated, segmented, with sections only synchronising with each other at fixed intervals, any desired data transfers analysed by high-end ghost LAIs for possible contamination.

There was also the problem of proof of identity. In a sense, one's data cache was one's self for all non-face-to-face interactions. There was almost certainly enough information there to build a convincing digital simulacra of its owner; several convincing celebrity sex scandals, back near the birth of this technology, were enough proof of this. Hence, Shinji Ikari was dredging his memory for ill-remembered passwords, and suspected that he might have to go for a gene-verification. It would be easier, after all.

Muttering under his breath, he gave up, and slumped back in the seat. It wasn't like he couldn't do that later, and, frankly, he just could not be bothered to go through this whole mess right now.

The PCPU chimed. The installed LAI was a stupid, generic one, by Shinji's reckoning; completely devoid of the heuristic training that made a muse a muse. Nevertheless, it was informing him of a call from Major Katsuragi. He answered.

"Yes."

"Shinji, it's me," Misato said, unnecessarily. "I'm waiting outside. I've sent you a map beacon. Come on."

Several thoughts ran through the boy's head. Among those were _Couldn't you just have come inside?_, _What's happening?_, _I don't want to speak to you, you put me in a giant robot and used me as a child soldier!_, _I'm tired, and don't want to do anything_, and, of course, _I wonder what she looks like naked._ It remains eminently possible, of course, that the last thought was not sourced from his brain. But what he actually said was, with a groan, "Okay," as he pulled his aching body to a vertical position, and slouched towards the exit, following the map on the device.

Misato greeted him with a wave, standing next to a greyish-green car which looked vaguely like it was breaking the speed limit, even while remaining still. Inside, though, she was slightly nervous. She hadn't ever intended for the Foundation to pay attention to the fact that she'd claimed the "Assets" subsidy when getting her current apartment. Well, that wasn't quite true. She had actually vaguely contemplated the possibility of getting a nice, pre-house-trained flatmate, or, at least, failing that, a cute man who she might be able to 'accidentally' walk in on in the shower.

A sixteen-year old boy had not been who she had planned. Come to think of it, she probably should have cleaned up the flat in the time since she had been told, but... eh, what was the worst that could happen?

Actually, this kind of slightly perverse humour meant that the finger of blame was quite possibly directed at the Deputy Representative. She wouldn't put it past that old man, especially since she'd also been, discreetly, told that when they moved Unit 02 over from the Eastern Front, there would be another guest. She always had the feeling that he was somehow laughing at a lot of things, watching silently from over Gendo Ikari's shoulder. It was probably better than crying, which she suspected that she would do if she was forced to spend too much time around her penultimate superior. One of her penultimate superiors. She had once tried to work out who she actually reported to, and had given up in confusion. And had needed to be been drunk to even attempt it.

The boy that stood in front of her, she thought, the chain linking seamlessly into another, as she looked him up and down... well, there was something physically that suggested that he was related, a certain sense of familiarity about his appearance. But from the rest, well, he hadn't shown any sign of being a suave political operator or a cold technocrat... unless he was really, really good at it.

No, that wasn't plausible. The very idea was ridiculous.

His gaze was also, notably, lowered a certain amount. Well, it was really her fault; she had known that she was going to be spending the day in various hazard suits, so was wearing a strappy top. At least she was wearing a bra; the alternative would have been embarrassing. She still coughed, and suppressed a smile at the way his gaze guiltily leapt back up to her face. Misato kept her eyes on his face as she explained the situation, that she was now his legal guardian, and that he would be staying with her. There was a surprising lack of protest; not only a lack of vocal objection, but very little change in body language, either. He'd either been told already, just didn't care, or... well, those were the only two possibilities she could think of. He certainly didn't seem to be a skilled enough dissembler to cover such things. Although there was always his heritage to take into consideration...

No. She had to stop being paranoid about this, just because he was Gendo Ikari's son.

"Are... are you okay with that?" she finished.

There was a shrug. "I didn't think it was likely I'd be allowed to go home," he said, no real emotions in his voice. "And one place is pretty much the same as another."

Misato sighed, an emotion split between annoyance and relief. "So you're fine that you're not living with your father, then?"

Something flashed in his eyes. "Yes, I'm fine with that. It's probably for the best, all in all. I haven't lived with him since I was four." He paused. "I'll still be able to keep in contact with Y... with my foster mothers?" he asked, with a warmth in his tone which notably hadn't been there when talking about his father.

The black-haired woman nodded. "Yes, of course."

"Then it's okay, then." A hint of sadness in his eyes belied the statement.

"Don't worry," said Misato, with a grin at his discomfort. "I'll be on my best behaviour. Come on, it'll be fun!"

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Nah... na na na!" Misato sang, along with the radio, as she pulled down, skipping just over a section of flooded ruins, leaving a wake behind her. "Na na na na, there are three floooooooo-wers in a vaaaaaa~aaaaase..." She pulled the control yokes sharply, and the car pulled upwards, pushing Shinji back against the seat, as the stereo blared.

Why! Why! Why did she drive like this? He had a slight tendency to motion sickness normally, but this... this was far beyond anything he had experienced that didn't involve sitting in a giant robot and being fired up a chute. And at least that had been linear. He was feeling sick. He was feeling so sick that the contents of his stomach were feeling sick, and they weren't about to move, or they themselves might throw up.

On the plus side, it did mean that he hadn't actually been sick yet. And it wasn't that she was a bad driver, in a technical sense. In fact, in a technical sense, she was very good. It was just that she seemed to treat the car as a low-flying fighter craft, taking hostile fire, rather than as a... well a car. Certainly, he hadn't met anyone before who would disengage the autopilot just so that she could fly at just above building level, and ... argh! That had been a spire from a ruined church or something!

"Na na na, the third of theeeee-em is... huh," Misato turned her head sideways to the boy, who had a fist crammed into his mouth, and was trying to whimper and hyperventilate at the same time, with only limited success.

"Keep your eyes on the road!" Shiniji tried to say. It came out as an incoherent, unintelligible squeak, but at least he had tried, right?

"Don't worry," she said, cheerfully, "we're almost there. I've got something to show you. It's a good place." The car levelled out once again, at a nice, safe, not-less-than-one-metres-above-the-ground-while-in-free-flight-mode flight. "You know," she added, drumming her fingers on the control yokes, "I really don't use my out-of-Arcology permit enough. Haven't had time recently, I guess. Oh, and make sure you're wearing your mask when we get out of the car. The scrubbers should have caught most of the a-chrom contaminants by now, but... better safe than sorry, right?"

Shinji declined to comment, and, when they landed, limply sort of flowed out of the car and out onto the grass.

"Oh, come on," he heard Misato say. "Get up. It wasn't that bad, was it?" He wanted to make some kind of incredibly witty comeback, which would leave her grovelling in knowledge just how unpleasant her driving was, but, looking up at her, figure over him looming in the twilight, he just couldn't bring himself to do it. She looked so enthusiastic, eyes gleaming, and a wide grin on her face, visible under the filter mask, like she had really enjoyed the drive, and couldn't understand why anyone else would not.

Also, he couldn't think of anything good enough to produce the desired result.

"I... I... uh, I think I'm just feeling a bit weak from all the... everything," he lied. Well, it wasn't exactly a lie, he was still feeling a bit floppy and uncoordinated, but it was by no means the main cause. She helped him stand, and guided him over to a seat by a railing, looking north towards London-2.

Above him, he heard the cry of a bird, and looked up. There was some kind of... he squinted into the setting sun... some kind of predatory bird, he guessed, circling up above, free and unconstrained.

Misato followed his gaze. "Huh," she said. "Isn't that a... a falcon?"

"I don't know."

"Me neither, really. I think it's a cybird, though."

_Ah, yes,_ thought Shinji. That sort of took the pleasantness off the naturalism; the knowledge that even a bird was nothing more than an autonomous surveillance system from the point of view of mankind, and something it would make use of as it saw fit. It was monitoring them even now, the cameras implanted into its body tracking their thermal signatures, and sending its signals back to its handling systems.

But that didn't mean that it wasn't still beautiful. Well, maybe not beautiful, but at least awe-inspiring in some way.

"But look," said Misato, gazing back towards the north. "Look at it."

Lit by the setting sun, London-2 was visible. The flattened, tiered pyramids of the above-ground arcologies were gleaning in the light, painted red by the sunset. In between their kilometre-wide bases, was a forest of interconnected skyscrapers and apartment buildings, sealed off from the world outside in their own way. Looking around, the boy could see the matt shapes of defence systems, breaking up the city and shaping it to resist assault; London-2, like all modern arcology complexes, was a fortress city. And that was not to mention the honey-comb of arcology domes under the city, protected by the surface and the armour plating or, even deeper, the Geocity, ten kilometres down. That they could build something like that, so deep... well, Shinji felt, in retrospect that was far more impressive than the mere fact that there was an artificial ecology down there.

"Wow," he said, softly. "It is impressive, isn't it."

The Major shook her head, sadly. "No," she said. "Look... look to the east. Wait a moment." She went back to the car, retrieving a pair of binoculars. "These'll help. And don't look at the sun directly," she added.

Shinji signed. He was looking to the east, and it wasn't like he was an idiot. But, yes, looking in the direction Misato had directed, up above the shining river of iron oxide and silver that was the Thames, he could see it. One of the arcologies was not shining in the light. No, it was matt grey, and through the lenses, Shinji could see the crumbling, broken outline. There were tiny brightly coloured dots flocking all over it; he thought for a moment that they might be birds, before he got a sense of the scale, and realised that they were maintenance vehicles, trying to hold the structure together, and remove the damaged sections, before they collapsed and damaged the largely intact skeleton of the structure. And looking around, he could see the trail of damage around the area, the later, smaller blast mark, and then the area where he had... done the thing.

"Is that..." he asked, already knowing the answer.

Misato nodded. "Yes. That's the place they used the warhead on." She sighed. "I know why we use arcanochromatically enhanced warheads. The variant-state electrons mean that you need less energy to set it off, and the colour does something funny to Migou and Storm monsters, even if they survive. I've seen it happen. But... " she sighed again, "I'm not always sure it's worth it. Look at the grey. Look what it does to stuff. They're going to have to ship it off to a dump-site, because it's useless. And... I just hope too much colour didn't enter the water system. It's just good it didn't rain."

"We were too close to that," said Shinji, in a small voice.

"Yes... oh, no, if you're worried about that, people only really get affected at the kind of ranges that mean you'll be dying from the blast." She turned to face him then, eyes gazing down from on top of the filter mask. "Listen to me, Shinji. Look at that. Look at how much damage that did. And it didn't kill it. But you... but you," said the Major, her eyes aflame, "you did. You saved the city, which meant that they didn't have to use any more of those things. And... 24 million people... that's like half a percent of the world population. They're all alive, thanks to you." She paused. "You did well," Misato added, the corners of her eyes crinkling up.

They stood together in silence, gazing out over the city, as the sun set.

"Come on," said Misato. "Let's go home."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Misato, as it turned out, lived in one of the deeper domes, which stacked like honeycomb under the surface. Despite its depth, though, it was still far above the Geocity. A cluster of apartment buildings made a series of concentric circles around a central garden-square, the architecture all too typical of 2070's neo-post-classicism; the structures vaguely Mesopotamian in their stepped pyramid design, but cast in the whites of marble and in steel and glass. The dome and apartment security was rather impressive, too.

"Oh, this is a fairly common place for higher ranking people in the Foundation or some of the IPcorps to live," explained Misato to his question, once they had cleared the inevitable blood scans. "It's a bit of pain, but I... and you, too, were always going to have to put up with it, here." She paused. "I haven't been able to get the rest of your stuff shipped over," she explained, with a slight awkwardness, "but that should be coming soon, right? And, uh, I have been kinda busy the last few days, so, the apartment might be a bit of a mess."

The door slid open. Shinji paused, before stepping in. "May I come in?" he said, almost reflexively, in his native Japanese.

Misato smiled at him, widely. "This is your house from now on," she replied, in the same language.

He stepped across the threshold. "Well, I'm back," he said, softly.

"Yes, you are. Now, come on," Misato said, hefting the bag of shopping she'd picked up in between the... 'flight' was still, unfortunately, the best word he had come up with to describe it, and actually getting here, "You'll want to put this in the fridge."

The boy paused. _Shouldn't that be your job? I don't even know where the fridge is?_

"It's on the right. Go on through... it's a fridge. It's kinda obvious."

That was a lie. That is, insomuch as it was obvious. It was, in fact, obscured by masses of plastic crates, the kind that any civilian nanofactory could make cheaply, and in large numbers, and the sheer number of bottles of various alcoholic drinks which littered almost every available surface.

Shinji could feel his skin _crawl_ at the sight of all that mess.

_It's not like it's even hard_, he thought. _Just dump the rubbish in the nanofactory, and it'll be broken down, and you get the raw materials back._ He could even see the bulk of the machine, tucked away in a smaller room off the kitchen. _Can she really not be bothered?_

Of course, he didn't say any of this out loud. But if he was living here, then there would have to be some changes. Gingerly, he poked at the pile of stuff on the table, clearing some space for the bags, so he could unpack properly, and swung open the door of the nearest of the two fridges.

There was beer. There was ice. There were bottles of various sauces and spicy things. The grinning man on the Planetary Hot had a large thumbprint stain over his torso.

_Oh... yuck._ She really must have no sense of taste. The actual food in the fridge was the cheapest, blandest open-source stuff you could find, the kind of thing that only poor students, or people who were morally opposed to IP locks _and_ were bad at finding alternatives on the Grid ate. Slaps of greyish-pink-white protein in plastic containers, the kind that you'd take whole out of a nanofab, and slice off when you wanted to use it. Sacks of noodles, and, worse, they were the ones made pre-cooked, that you just heated up, the insides of their bags coated with starch that crackled when he swatted them aside. Greenish fibre-mash, that somehow managed to have the texture of _something_ organic while lacking anything specific. And nothing that they'd bought, looking through the bags, was a valid meal; it was all side dishes and more beer and/or sauces.

Shinji shuddered, and patted for his PCPU. Well, at least he'd bought some proper saved templates, and some good-quality raw material designs, saved in the... internal... memory... of... his...

Damn. _Hello, bad quality food. Must remedy this. Fast. Or will lose will to live._

"I've finished changing! You can go make yourself at home, your room's first on the left... or is it second. Oh, I'm sure it doesn't matter." Misato stepped into the kitchen, dressed in... well, she was decent. Decentish. "I think it's time to start cooking!" she declared.

The lack of a thunderclap or howling of wolves in the background just showed, in Shinji's opinion, that reality did not have a proper sense of dramatic necessity.

The food was not actually as bad as he expected, as he stared at the bowl of green and greyish-yellow and pink before him. It was worse, because it was mixed in with a bright orange and a dull red that had blended in a way, he shivered, looked a lot too much like LCL for his stomach to really handle. Just looking at it bought to mind the metal-and-oil-and-something-else taste, and that thick texture filling his lungs and stomach and...

At least he had managed to grab some of the prawn crackers before Misato had smeared blue all over them. He was currently contemplating making a play for the vegetable-rice which, despite the red poured on the top, didn't look too inedible, compared to the pink stuff on the meat she'd bought, which even the smell of had left him clutching for a glass of water.

"Well, eat up!" she demanded of him, already cracking open another can of beer.

_Now, if I were some kind of Machiavellian genius_, he thought, _I would have some kind of ploy to deal with this._ The grey protein floated in the noodle soup. _Okay, well, let's take a look at my priorities here. I know that the protein is going to be bland and functional, as are the noodles. I don't want to eat the fibre-mash, because that stuff... well, it'll keep you alive, but on the other hand, it's sort of disintegrated in the soup, so it might not be so bad, as it's declumped. The sauce is right out, because nothing that's called 'Planetary Hot' is ever a good idea to eat, and that colour... bleargh._

_Well, here goes._ Like a falling eagle in pursuit of a job as a prophetic symbol, his chopsticks snatched up a snake-like mass of noodles. The metaphor broke down at that point, because his mouth did not resemble a cactus, not even topologically, but, nevertheless, he ate them.

The mix of tastes was interesting. To a forensics expert, certainly. And if he closed his eyes, they didn't look LCL-coloured, which made them almost palatable. Emphasis on the 'almost'.

"Oh, come on, don't be a wimp," he heard. "The sauce is the best bit! And you need to eat properly. After all, you're just out of hospital!"

_And I'd really rather not go back there,_ he thought, with a hint of vitriol.

He opened his eyes to find that he was staring down her top, as she leant towards him. He quickly lowered his eyes to the bowl, and fished out a chuck of protein, swallowing it with a weak grin in her direction, which he tried very hard not to turn into a wince.

"Good. I don't want you to wither away, after all," Misato said. She flushed slightly. "And I'm not just saying that as the Operations Manager for Project Evangelion," she added hastily.

A thought that had been nagging at the boy raised itself again. "Why are there so many Japanese people involved in the Project?" he asked. "I mean, there..."

Misato flapped a hand, narrowly avoiding slopping beer from the can it held. "No, I get it. Was originally going to be in Toyko-3, that Geocity. But, you know, they decided... some time ago, ten years ago, maybe, that the way that the threat from the Storm, the way that Leng just ate Tibet, and kept spreading... well, it was too dangerous." She shook her head, a darker expression on her face. "And that was before the Fall of China. Japan saw Storm attacks before they got that contained," the Major added, in a morose tone quite out of keeping with her normal voice. "I suppose you were... about seven or so then, when it moved. You wouldn't have known it, just how bad it got. And that was before what happened in Berlin-2 destroyed the other centre for Evangelion research."

"I... I suppose that makes sense that they moved it, then. I do... I do remember how Father... how I saw him even less after about then. But... didn't you object at all to having to move everything. I mean, wouldn't it make everything more difficult." He smiled. "I mean, it must have been a pain to move the Evangelion all the way here."

Misato glared at him, though narrowed eyes. That... that had probably been the wrong thing to say. Then, quite deliberately, she slopped some beer onto the boy. "I'm not that old," she said, her tone outraged. "I... I was still at uni then, I'll have you know! Not much older than you are now!"

"Uh... sorry." _Wait! Why am I apologising! You just splashed beer in my face! If anything, you should be saying sorry to me!_

"Eh, it's all right. I can see that you were using the group 'you', and so _not at all_ suggesting that I'm that old. Were you?"

"Of... of course not." _Hag. Wait, no, should I be thinking that? Probably not. That's a bit extreme. Mentally, I'm sorry, Misato, but I'm not saying that out loud, because then I'd have to admit that I thought it, and I don't want to be splashed in the face with beer again._

"Then you should probably go clean yourself up, then. There should be some fresh clothes in one of the rooms... I can't remember which I dumped them in, and there should be a bath ready. It should be free, now."

Shinji nodded, and got up. Actually... that hadn't gone as badly as he might have thought. Sure, he may have got some beer sloshed onto him, but at least he hadn't needed to eat the food. So, with a bit of luck, Misato would be selfish, and eat the rest, and then he could go prepare himself something bland and functional from the ingredients in the fridge; something that hadn't been ruined by the addition of too much flavouring.

Wait, what had she meant by 'should be free, now'?

Sitting back, her third beer in hand, Misato heard the scream from the bathroom. Oh yeah. No, wait, he should have seen him by now. Or had he?

She shrugged. Well, they'd probably met now.

"Misato!" she heard the desperate call. "There's... there's a giant albino p-p-penguin in the bathroom."

"Oh, that's just Pen-Pen," she called back. "He's a lodger."

"H-he's not letting me out of the corner!" was the desperate-sounding response. "He's... he's staring at me!"

"Oh, that's just because he doesn't have very good eyesight," she called. Should she get up? No, not really, she thought, as she leant across, to take the remaining prawn crackers. "He's almost blind, so he's just getting to recognise you. Just flap at him with your hands if he's being a pain."

"I... I really, really don't want to move my hands. He might go for me. They're guarding..." Shinji paused, "...something very important. Do birds eat... uh, sausages?"

"Well, they certainly eat worms," Misato called back, with a grin.

"You're not helping!" There was a note of panic in the boy's voice.

Misato sighed. She'd probably extracted the most comedy that she could out of the situation. Reaching for the toothpicks, she extracted a chunk of protein which had got stuck, as she leant forwards, scooping some food onto Shinji's plate, before putting it on the floor. "Pen-Pen," she called out, "Food! Also, beer!"

There was a noise which sounded remarkably like "Wark!", and the monochrome bulk of an Antarctican Urbanised Albino Emperor Penguin came barrelling through, red eyes filled with hunger, and decended upon the plate. There were, indeed more "Wark" noises, as its atavistic tooth-like ridges that ran along its beak got to work on the food. There was a pause in the noise, as he stopped, to squint up at his mistress.

"Wark."

Misato nodded. "Oh, right. Sorry." There was the sound of her breaking the seal on the can of beer, before she passed it down. A clawed wing-hand took the can, and put it down next to the plate. "Pen-Pen, that was Shinji. Don't hassle him, please."

"Wark?"

"Oh, yes."

"Wark? Wark-wark."

"Yes, he'll be here for a while."

"_Wark?_"

"Of course not!" Misato shook her head. "I... I don't... it doesn't..."

"Wark."

"Oh, right."

Shinji lay back in the bath, and listened to the insanity outside the locked bathroom door. This... wasn't what he expected. Not the fact that there was an Antarctican Urbanised Albino Emperor Penguin living with him. That wasn't anything that anyone could expect reasonably. If he had expected anything, it was that he might be placed with someone like his foster mothers. Not like... this woman. Whoever had thought that she was a good carer for a teenage boy should probably lay off the hallucinogens, and stop listening to the green elephants.

_Still... Misato might be okay. I don't think she's a bad person._ He paused. _Well, she has no sense of what's good food, and is a slob, and, when we get down to it, is sort of responsible for using me as a child soldier. So, she's sort of a bad person. But that's sort of her job... wait, the cooking and laziness has nothing to do with that. So... well, she's no worse a person than most people. Except most people don't use child soldiers._

_Well, she's not my father._

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The two figures stood on the hovering platform, high above the Evangelion bays. Below them Unit 01 was covered in moving figures, the remote controlled drones under the control of the Ouranos systems, as it prioritised sections for manual repair, and ran containment protocols. Beside it, on the other side of the massively reinforced wall, Unit 00, obscured by the bright-orange and raw metal of the emergency restraint Type-Null armour stood. Its back was exploded outwards, deconstructed as a team pulled apart its power systems, trying to fix the flaw that had prevented proper deactivation.

"How was Rei?" asked Ritsuko, softly, lowering the exo that she had been working on. Gendo merely stared down, through obscured eyes. The scientist couldn't tell which of the Evangelions he was looking at, though.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"You went to the hospital today, didn't you?" she asked.

Gendo did not look at her. "She will be recovered in twenty-three days, they estimate. The new eye will be functional in fifteen. I have taken actions to ensure that she will remain useful during that time period." He paused. "Less recuperation would have been needed, had she not been moved." The last words were not 'admitted', nor were they 'muttered'. They were merely 'said', in the same, clinical tone.

"It's for the best that we didn't have to use Unit 00 in the Type-Null," Ritsuko remarked, glancing back down at her thread. For once, her harcontacts were off, her pupils and irises no different from any unmodified person's.

"The Council of Representatives backed me fully in this," Gendo said, ignoring her. "Even Research, though it pained her. Our allies on the Council have agreed that we should try to keep all the Units operational; we have all the valid RTE exemptions."

"If only one hadn't been in Vegas..."

"Yes. That was an... annoying loss. Though it was expendable, assets should not be wasted like that."

Ritsuko paused. "Have... have you talked with Herkunft yet?" she asked. "After what happened..."

"Yes. I have a meeting with the Director on the 27th. She is... concerned, too."

"She is afraid what happened eight years ago will happen again." It was not a question.

"Undoubtedly." Gendo paused, a deliberate silence. "_Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich_," he said, softly, as he stared down at the arcanocyberxenobiological monstrosities below.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Staff Sergeant Grigol Marikiev lay up at the ceiling, and stared blankly up at the darkness.

His hand crept to the side, and slid the dimmer switch up, until the darkness was banished, leaving a grey. Besides him, Ponaya rolled over in his sleep, and muttered to himself. Grigol ignored him. He was pretty sure that he wasn't going to be sleeping tonight. He hadn't slept properly yesterday, either.

Or the night before that.

He was certainly going to have to talk about it at his next PsychEval. He sat up, and rubbed one tired eye with the back of his hand. Did they have any sleeping tablets left? A check in the bathroom cupboard, up high, revealed that, no, the packet was empty.

He could run out and get some. There was a diagnostic booth nearby, as there was near all military housing. The Limited Artificial Intelligence would certainly give out weak sleeping tablets, and it would automatically flag it for his next PsychEval.

The man let out a grunt. Like he was going to forget to mention that.

He crept downstairs, feet light upon the pale carpeting, and, scrabbling at the wall, flicked the lights on. Ponaya wouldn't be able to hear the tap from down here, would he? Probably not.

The water was cold against his skin. He felt flushed, overheating. Staring at his reflection in the darkened window revealed puffy, bloodshot eyes, obvious even at a glance.

There was some paracetamol in the medical bag in the kitchen, wasn't there? Or there might be some sleeping pills.

"_Holding position," Zaly had reported in, from her Type-M059-X main battle tank. This had been followed by reports from the rest of his squadron._

_"Hold fire," he had reminded them. "Don't fire until authorisation comes from Command, even if we're fired on."_

_"Yeah," his own gunner had muttered, from her pod above him. "Don't want to draw the _ilumihamobi'_s attention._

_He had reprimanded her with a brief word, but she had been right. It was horrible, parked here, A-Pods slowly inching their way along, tracking the beast. It was a dark silhouette in the twilight, a patch of nothingness that blocked the own fell radiance of that sun on its chest. It had not been moving much; it had been almost as if it was looking for something._

Oh God, let there be sleeping pills.

There were none.

_The urgent orders had come through, and they had been forced to move, as, suddenly, the blackness of the Harbinger had welled and swelled into a tumultuous wave of unreality. The Type-M059-X and Type-M055 MBTs had disengaged from their low, ground-hugging combat tactics, and given chase, more akin to pre-arcanotechnology helicopter gunships than a tracked tank._

The useless medicine bag slipped out of his suddenly slack hands, and clattered to the ground, the contents spilling all over the place with a rattle and a clatter, the pills inside their containers bounding around with a noise like dice.

Following in that terrible smooth region that the dark-wave gave, the electrical discharges of the reneutralising air arcing harmlessly off the hardened shell of the hovertanks, had been unpleasant. Buffeted by the air-currents, chasing something that he could barely perceive, so heavy had been the autocensors' marks; he never wanted to go through it again. He never wanted to remember it again.

With a muffled curse, he grabbed a beer from the fridge. And paused, and put it back, and went in search of something harder.

_There had been other units, waiting where the thing had reformed, and, on the battlefield map displayed on his optical jack, there had been air units holding place above the battlefield._

_And there had been the _other _thing. It was not like the Harbinger; it was manufactured, in the splotched, split colours of human camouflage. But... if it had been smaller, he would have said that it was an Engel. He had served with Engels before, even if they were a bunch of over-promoted, arrogant creepy wierdos with thousand-yard stares, and those blatant cybernetics on their spine that, he was sure, was part of the reason they were... off._

_That had been a difficult break-up, in retrospect._

_But that thing... it had been too large, for one. Even the biggest Engels, the Seraphim and Chashmalliam (and they were the superheavies) would only have reached up to its thighs. At most. God. It had to have been forty metres tall, at least._

_And the Harbinger had grasped it, and it wasn't fighting back._

Grigol sat down heavily in front of the television, and took a mouth of the... he'd picked up a bottle of _konbutwihyohi_, and it burned like the blazes when going down. That... that had probably been a mistake, he thought, as he blinked. This was the stuff which could be used to make a Molotov cocktail or sterilise a wound. The stuff that you didn't need to put in a clean glass.

He winced, as he took another swig. No, he hadn't made a mistake. This was exactly what he needed.

Slipping on a pair of arglasses, as he couldn't be bothered to connect his optical jacks up, he bought up the control panel. After all, the so-called television was just another terminal for his Grid profile. Turning down the volume, he flicked to the main news, and took a smaller mouthful as soon as he saw what they were still showing.

Liars. That's what they were, liars. There hadn't been any Engels involved. He'd have seen them. Which meant, by drunken deduction, that that thing hadn't been an Engel.

_as it went flying, backwards, following a trajectory that was wrong to the eye. Grigol had mourned, as his heart fell, because they'd actually been doing damage to the Harbinger, and the armoured not-Engel had managed to weaken it, with that close-up attack on that red... red, scarlet, crimson..._

Gagging, Grigol Marikiev dribbled what remained of the burning alcoholic drink, as he bent over, gasping with sudden remembered nausea. A wave at the control panel turned the screen off, and he sat in the darkness, breath ragged, the bottle held at his side. He had to get out of the house. It was cramped in here. Get to somewhere else. Maybe one of the other domes, one of the ones that didn't follow the terrestrial day-night cycle. Get out of the dark house, without waking Ponaya.

_from in the crumbling arcology, something roared. No, 'roared' wasn't the right word. It was the gargling scream of a man with his tongue removed as his lungs filled with his own blood, of something young and yet _old _in pain. So much pain that there was no more intellect to spare; something bestial and horrible and terrible._

He shrugged on a jumper. It was the nearest to hand. No need for a shirt, and it wasn't like it ever got cold down in the underground arcology domes. Quite the opposite; they had to keep D-Sinks running to get rid of all the waste heat that so many power-hungry citizens produced. Shoes were slipped onto bare feet; his pyjama bottoms wouldn't draw any attention.

The bottle of _konbutwihyohi_ was resealed, and slipped into a pocket. It was still useful. And with that done, Grigol lurched out the door, wiping his drenched forehead with a sleeve.

_Then, there had been nothing, but a crashing, as the greyed out, arcanochromatically contaminated overground arcology slipped, the entire facade collapsing along that flank. Even the red light of the monster was gone, and the babble of Command's contradictory orders had filled his ears. Confusion had reigned._

It was better outside. Better in the hallway for the military apartment complex, brightly lit and cooler. Clutching at the railing, to overcome the feeling of vertigo, and the suddenly too-close drop, the man staggered along. It took him three jabs with a thumb to hit the lift button

_the ground cracked, one of those smooth areas where the _thing _had done what it did which melted everything. The ground... everything shook, lethally grey buildings falling into shards of brittle colourlessness, the thick dust choking the air. The ground shook again, and again. There was something happening underground._

The man could barely stay upright by the time that he got to the ground floor. Everything was spinning. Pausing, he took a mouthful of the burning liquid. It seemed to help, in a not very helpful way. That is to say, although things stabilised, the nausea only worsened, as the fluid stung his mouth. He only managed to swallow about half of it, the rest dribbling out through lips it hurt to close, numbed by the alcohol.

Wincing, he felt his lips. The red of blood could be seen on his hands, even through tear-filled eyes, and the taste of iron was now a necrotic undertone to the ethanol taste of the _konbutwihyohi_. He'd bit his own lips or tongue or something. Didn't matter.

_and then the pair emerged from the ground, locked in an embrace, rolling, rolling, a pair of brawling gods cut from their father's stomach. Poisedon's hands beat down upon the black skin of Hades, before Pollux got one lamprey-tipped finger into the guts of Castor, and sent it arcing once again through the air, tumbling helplessly as it smashed through buildings and crushed armoured units. The fire from the tanks and the aircraft was almost meaningless in the fight between the two behemoths; the sun-bright beams from the Type-M059-X experimental main battle tanks only chipping at the flesh of the thing, only for the void-flesh to regrow, twisted and broken._

_The figure of the Harbinger was barely humanoid anymore, as the humanoid symmetry was broken. It was a monstrosity of warped, cancerous unflesh, those bone-like protrusions shattered and smeared across its surface, tenebral blood-fluid oozing from its flesh. Right on the top, by its right arm, was an entire section torn out, with what looked like teeth marks scoring it._

The bottle fell to the ground, the slow glug of emptying fluid an echo to the gloing of the resin as it rolled across the floor.

Oh God. Grigol patted his pockets for his PCPU. He needed help. And he succeeded in turning up nothing. Of course. It was in his trousers. Back in the room.

Slumping down on the floor, the man stared up at the light. It was good, right? It was light. It wasn't dark. Not dark like the monsters. And not red light, either... proper white light.

_white light._

_Shimmering, glimmering crystalline light. Silver and silksteel and silent sussurations that sang in his skull and spoke of the silence that stood just out of sight._

No. Oh no.

_oh yes._

_The not-Engel pulled itself to its feet. It was slick with some kind of dark ichor, flowing freely from its punctured eye and the cracks all along its arms, and the gut wound from which fragments of flesh hung freely. It opened its maw again, though, diamond-teeth contaminated with the shadow-flesh of the Harbinger, and roared its dying, gurgling scream, the hydraulics in its jaw gnashing and twitching. Lowering its head, leading with the vicious horn, it charged at its foe again, claws on too-long arms slick with the mixed blood of the two monsters. If its arm was damaged, it was ignoring it._

No. Please. No. I don't want to remember this. Let me forget. Please.

_it happened. Why deny it?_

Because...

_...one of the Harbinger's arms was entirely useless by now, swollen and bloated; more akin to some leg afflicted with elephantiasis than any kind of manipulator. It managed to raise the other arm, though, and the line of force it had used to slice apart the battleship suddenly _was_, again._

_It hit the not-Engel in the chest, and... stopped. The oncoming monster screamed, but it was a scream of rage, of hunger, not one of pain, and leapt upwards, shifting in mid-air so that its clawed hands and open maw were pointed towards its prey._

_And there was light_

Not the light. Wrong! Wrong! Unclean!

_He had seen the diorama, even through the autocensor. On the left, stuck in mid-air, the human monster, unmoving. On the right, the alien thing, that one remaining useful hand held upright, palm forwards. In between them... the light. A wall of broken diamond, making its own light and letting light shine through it, to make a lattice of should-not-be-yet-is._

_The not-Engel reached out, with a gesture that was too subtle for a beast, yet was not something a man would do. Almost gently, it penetrated the brightness with the long, thin claws on its damaged right hand; pale, ichor-soaked flesh prominent in the bright light. That apparent gentleness was nothing but a lie; with a sudden burst of violent speed that left the air screaming in chorus with the triumphant agony of the armoured beast, it tore open the light. Sudden dark, almost vein-like channels ran through the adamantine brilliance, before it ceased to be, in a ripple of force that propagated out, knocking the hovertanks around like toys._

_The not-Engel slammed into the Harbinger, bowling it over and over and over, the metal fiend obviously in control of the grapple this time._

Grigol clutched at his skull, palms clutched to his eyes, as he writhed around on the floor. He... he didn't remember this! He hadn't seen it! Not like this! The autocensor had been in the way! He couldn't have seen it.

_evangelion was hungry. Kneeling on the chest of the Harbinger, it began its butchery. The claws, blades shimmering with the light of broken diamonds as the D-Fields were forcefully activated to supplement its arsenal, found their way into the void-body of Asherah, levering out the bony growths, tossing the fragments of corpus away, as the rigid definition of the Harbinger softened, resembling the wave-form in the areas where the Evangelion had begun to work. But that was not its main goal. The arcanocyberxenobiological warmachine slammed its horned forehead into the radiance on the centre of the chest, over and over and over again, prominences erupting from each impact, squirting disturbingly vital jets out with each impact, which burst over the landscape, painting the greyed, crumbling landscape in Picassan tones._

_Something, a single something, hung from the Evangelion's mouth; something disturbingly organic, almost akin to a tongue. But if it was a tongue, then it hung down far too far, and writhed and spasmed with an intent which seemed conscious._

I don't know this, the man screamed inside his own head. Writhing, twisting, spasming! Horrible!

_One desperate last blow from the Harbinger missed its intended target, as the Evangelion ducked, the blow catching one of the shoulder-fin things, snapping it off, and sending it spinning like a deranged coin, off through a building in a gout of ichor. The Evangelion caught the arm above its head, and, with a twist at the waist, first broke it in one place, then at a second. With a malevolent slowness, Unit 01 worked the breaks against each other, twisting and turning in the gouts of tenebral fluid that escaped from the thing._

_It grew bored._

_One blow to the already-damaged shoulder severed the limb, tossed away idly, before the beast got back to its fun._

Grigori was in a ball, sobbing freely. His body felt wrong in every way. Crawling blindly along the ground, he mewed for anyone to find him, on hands bloodied and scraped.

_And its fun was fun indeed. Perhaps that was too much for Harbinger-3, too much for that which mankind had dubbed Asherah. Twisting, it wrapped its bloated remaining limbs around the Evangelion, expanding and swelling, losing coherence as it assumed and consumed Unit 01 under unshaped darkness. The alien organism lost all cohesion, and detonated, propagating outwards, twisting and deforming anything it touched. A vast crater was its gift to the Earth, a perfectly spherical pit of destroyed matter, one last abuse._

_Nothing could survive that._

_Surely._

_Surely?_

_The Evangelion raised back its head, both intact eyes aflame with a terrible actinic light in the darkness, and screamed its triumph to the universe at large._

_Its armour was damaged._

_Its flesh was mutilated._

_But it was alive._

Gloriously _so._

They found Staff Sergeant Grigol Marikiev at 05:08, on the 24th of August, 2091, curled in a corner, out of sight of the cameras.

He had chewed out his own tongue.

He was not the only one so affected. The manifestations of the rapid-onset Aeon War Syndrome were by no means identical, of course. But in the patterns of self-mutilation, in the mutterings of those who could still speak, there were certain patterns. Certain themes.

It was to be expected, after all. The exposure to a Harbinger-grade entity was a terrible thing.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

In the middle of the night, Shinji Ikari woke up on an unfamiliar bed, shivering uncontrollably, forehead slick with the sweat of nightmares.

Rapid, hollow pants filled the silent night air.

Hugging his legs close to his body, he stared at the light of the alarm clock, watching it tick away the seconds, shaving time from infinity.

_What happened out there! What did it do? What did _**I** _do?_

That was not the source of the terror.

_I think I'm starting to remember._

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The room, if indeed such a term could be used to describe an apparently infinite plane surface, was cold. Gendo Ikari did not let such things show though, even as he felt his blood freeze. It was only an illusion, anyway, he thought, as he stared at them, over the top of his steepled fingers, concealing his mouth. He wasn't actually physically here. And neither were they.

They. AHNUNG. They may once have had names, but now, it was best to think of them with mere identifying tags. It prevented prejudices from getting in the way. Gendo believed he had some fairly accurate guesses for their true identities, but that was all that they were; guesses. He didn't know for sure. But they were all, bar one, ancient. And that one, he was sure, was no longer even close to human.

White. Blue. Red. Green. Yellow. There were others, but only those five had deigned, as they would no doubt view it, to meet with him now.

White spoke.

"Your success against Harbinger-3 has been noted."

Green spoke.

"As has the collateral damage inflicted on the surrounding city, and which the Evangelion itself has suffered."

Blue spoke.

"Was it wise to give such a vital component to your son as a plaything?"

The contempt in the old man's voice was painted on his face, fringed beneath wisps of hair.

Gendo gazed back. "Such losses were inevitable. Now the NEGA is aware of the least of the dangers posed by the Harbinger-type entities, the Evangelions will be given free rein to deal with the threats."

Red spoke, her voice halting, not stuttering, but somehow distorted.

"Y-y-you are sssaying that it was inherently n-n-necessary." She paused. "Per-per-perhaps. But-but-but I do not believe that you... went about it in the m-m-most efficient manner. I think you-ou-ou were grandssstanding. That isss... highly inelegant."

Green spoke.

"Nevertheless, it has been deemed to be adequate."

White spoke.

"Satisfactory."

Blue spoke.

"Tolerable."

Yellow spoke.

"What must be done is necessary."

Red spoke.

"Y-y-you know what was_ss_ so un...expectedly di-di-discovered by the... fools of preceding generations_sss_."

Green spoke.

"On Callisto."

Yellow spoke.

"On Pandora."

Blue spoke.

"On Europa."

White spoke.

"In Lemuria and Antartica."

Gendo stared impassively at them; no emotions showing. To an outside observer, it was as if he could have waited a thousand years for their answer. Certainly, he was not about to let his inner feelings seep out in from of them.

Blue spoke.

"The goal has been deemed one worthy of any sacrifice which does not compromise the end-objective."

There was a pause, as if some kind of internal discussion was going on, in a circuit he did not have access to. In fact, that was almost certainly what was happening.

White spoke.

"Your progress has been deemed satisfactory. This meeting is over."

One by one, the other figures, lit in their colour, vanished into the blackness of this infinite plane.

White remained, and spoke again.

"Gendo Ikari. You are instructed to ensure the success of the Human Iteracy Project. It is not possible for you to back out now. The only valid route is success." The final figure vanished.

Gendo smiled; smirk hidden behind white gloves. Were these old fools so blinkered that they believed that their way was the _only_ way? Or were they just too scared to step from their path?

Well.

They would be shown another way.

* * *

~'/|\'~


	4. Chapter 3: Becoming a Child

**Chapter 3**

**Becoming a Child / There was a listening fear in her regard**

**AEON**

~'/|\'~

"_...and no matter what others may claim, it has been, and always will be the position of the Church that the so-called 'soul' is nothing of the kind, that it is not the perfect, inalterable gift blessed upon us by God, and that, in fact, to call it a 'soul' is a gross inaccuracy. The True Soul is a blessing by the Lord; it _is _the self in a very real sense, and so is far beyond the understanding of Man's reason. It grows and swells with Virtue, and suffers and withers with Vice. By contrast, the arcane construct which, sadly, has been given the title of 'soul' by a secular scientific establishment, which, by that very deed, seeks to denigrate faith, is not, and __**cannot**__ be the True Soul. One can live without an animaic waveform, and many do; to lack it is a mere medical condition, which removes the possibility that one can study sorcery or possess parapsychic powers. But no person is born without a True Soul, and one cannot lose one's True Soul, though the weak and foolish may give it away to the servants of the Adversary. The True Soul is the concern of faith; the animaic waveform is nothing but secular physics. And the two are fundamentally different."_

Carlos Fernadez, Bishop of Brazilia-A  
Excerpt from his speech, February 19th, 2091.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**25th of August, 2091**

The two figures faced each other over the expansive desk. One leant forwards, face utterly impassive, his eyes obscured. That one was impossible to read. The other was slumped back in his seat, eyes skipping from the man's face, to glance around the room, never settling on one place for too long. Nervousness, fear, tiredness, an underlying current of simmering anger; all these could be read with ease in the bright white light that filled the room.

Around them, in this vast hollow space, occult symbols floated, the light from the drone-screens occasionally painting Shinji and Gendo Ikari in colour when they moved close, only for the hint to be overwhelmed as soon as they moved away.

They didn't actually mean anything, to anyone who could actually read Enochian, Tsath-yo, Salaamian Standardised Code, or any of the various formats in which sorcerous rituals were commonly. That did not really matter. Gendo knew that his son could not comprehend them, and they looked _really_ impressive. Even if the modern sorcerer was more of akin to a doctor or a scientist than some tower-dwelling demon-summoning occultist, some things never changed.

Of course, Gendo Ikari _did_ actually have a tower. And he was scrupulous in denying that he summoned unsanctioned extra-normal entities.

Shinji, for his part, was feeling suitably intimidated. And tired. And a bit nauseous, because Major Katsuragi had decided that he shouldn't take public transport yet, and so had driven him here, even if it involved going up to the surface, and back down. The thing was, Shinji liked nice, predictable, smooth maglevs. They didn't induce motion sickness. Or require the use of fighter pilot-grade restraints.

The inconsistently locked gazes were broken by Fuyutsuki's cough.

Gendo nodded, once. "Shinji," he began. "You are aware of why you are here."

"I can guess, _father_," the boy replied, trying to keep his voice neutral, level, and failing.

_Good_, the man thought. _He is in the right emotional state._ Some might have queried whether one really wanted to negotiate with someone who was angry at you. Those people missed the point. Gendo had no intention of _negotiating_. As far as he was concerned, there was only one way that this could end, and in the pursuit of that goal, it was his task to ensure that the conditions were optimal.

"Then we can skip the unnecessary preamble." One finger pushed a slipping pair of arglasses back up to the bridge of his noise, as he stared down at his son. "You have a natural talent for piloting the Evangelion. That talent is needed; in all the time that we have been searching, we have found only two other people, and you have seen Test Pilot Ayanami already. She is in no state to do so at the moment. Therefore, we want you to join the 'Children' Test Pilot programme."

Shinji glared up at his father. "Really? In that case... no. No, I will not."

There was an almost unnoticeable shake of the older man's head. "You failed to enquire about what it would involve, or what the alternatives are," he said, a faint noise of disapproval entering his voice. "Fuyutsuki, explain what the Test Pilot programme entails."

The white-haired man cleared his throat. "The Test Pilot programme is designed to ensure that candidates can be involved in the activities demanded by the Evangelion Group and the necessities of training and testing, while ensuring that the ethical concerns are minimised. It enables a normal life to be maintained by the candidates, including full-time, mainstream education, rather than tutoring, to prevent them from ending up detached from society. The candidates, the so-called Children, are paid as a full-time test pilots, despite a greatly reduced work schedule, and count as employees of the Ashcroft Foundation when it comes to access to IPLibraries. The programme has been vetted by both the Foundation committee on Ethics, and the New Earth Government, as being legally compatible with child-labour and risk laws."

Shinji cocked his head, a faint sneer creeping onto his lips. "Very nice presentation," he said, only glancing to Fuyutsuki for a moment, before his stare returned to his father. "On the other hand... I could just _not_ be a child soldier, especially not in a giant Engel, and especially, _especially_ not after how I ended up hospitalised after the first time. So, really, no."

"Fine." Gendo's words were flat and level.

"Fine?" Shinji echoed.

"Fine," the man repeated, the corners of his mouth turning up in a disconcerting manner. "I cannot legally force you to do it. Of course," he added, as if the thought were just striking him, "I also cannot prevent your institutionalisation on global security grounds."

The boy groaned. "And here comes the stick," he subvocalised, as his father's head remained unmoving, presumably staring at him . "Explain?" he said out loud, trying to keep the shake out of his voice.

"The genetic factors that contribute to a talent for synchronisation with an Evangelion are not understood, and that makes them _dangerous_," the man said, in a level tone. "It may be a form of Outsider Taint which somehow has evaded detection . It may be a previously unknown form of parapsychic ability; he is about the right age for manifestation, is he not?" Gendo asked Fuyutsuki, rhetorically.

"Indeed, he is," was the response.

"It may be even be something more sinister, like..."

"I get it!" snapped Shinji, visibly paled and shaking. "You first give me the nice option, then you threaten to have me declared non-human

"Of course not," his father said, flatly. "You would have to choose to join the Test Pilot programme of your own free will, so we cannot therefore be threatening you, if we want you to join... which we do. And," he added, "do you really think I would do that, that I would be able to do it, if there wasn't a real risk? You think that I would not be affected by the fact that I too would be under suspicion for carrying the same factors?" There was a sudden forceful tone under Gendo's voice. He paused, the motion of his eyebrows showing the fact he was blinking. "You have a choice," he said.

Shinji glared at the opaque glasses that covered his father's eyes. _What was that man looking at under there?_ he wondered. Did he not even want to give Shinji his full attention? _Well_, he thought, _okay. I'm going to end up doing this, because _he _has given me no other choice. But... it can't be too bad, right? Well, yes, it can, because that thing, that Harbinger-thing, was horrible. But they called it Harbinger-3, which, logically, means that it must have been the third one they identified. Or maybe the fourth. Do the numbers start with zero, or one?_ He shrugged, mentally. _But if this is only, at most, the fourth, then they must be rare. I mean, this was a massive story, and I'd have heard about it if they were more common. So they shouldn't be that frequent. And it's not like I'd have to do it alone; there are other Evangelions, so it's not like I'd be sent out on my own to face the next one. This was just a special case because the _sidocy _was injured. It's going to be all right._

_No, it's not going to be all right. But I'm going to have do it anyway._

"No," he said out loud. "No, I don't have a choice. If I didn't take the offer, then I'd be crazy enough that I'd probably deserve to be declared mad and mentally unfit."

Gendo leant further forwards. "Good," he said. "Kozo, you will take him to the briefing room, and give him the full details and explain in full. After that, come back so we can sign them."

The older man nodded. "Yes. Come with me," he said, turning down to glance at Shinji, who, with one resentful glare at his father, stood and followed.

Gendo Ikari was left sitting, alone, in the cavernous office, staring blankly at the door. Shaking his head, he took off his arglasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose, running gloved index finger and thumb over his closed eyelids. That had been harder than he'd thought it would have been. The boy had Yui's jawline, and the sight of it set like that had been a far, far too familiar experience. Well, that and the tone of voice.

No, there was neither time for sleep nor remorse yet. He had far too much he had to do before he could spare the time for either.

The glasses went back on, and the mask returned, as if it had never been removed.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**26th of August, 2091**

"Okay, Shinji. This time we're going to take it slowly. We're starting with," Ritsuko checked the data stream on her harcontacts, "simple limb movements. We're not even going to ask you to try walking again, until we're sure that you have control over your limbs... we estimate that we might be able to try some time today."

She stared into the fluid-filled testing chamber, at the vast shape which hung, too-long limbs restrained, impersonating the Vitruvian man. Of course, this exercise had an equally important purpose; calibrating the user profile and synchronisation tests. She would have loved to have used the simulation bodies for this, but that wasn't an option, sadly, as experience with previous Test Pilot candidates had shown.

A small window opened up in her left eyeball, from one of the Operators. "Dr Akagi," reported Second Lieutenant Cheung, her body down in the full immersion chamber, "we are ready. I am pleased to report that my Direct Magi Interface Node is stable. We can begin building a personalised profile as soon as we start getting the data."

Ritsuko unconsciously nodded at the _amlaty_, a human reflex quite separate from the fact that the other woman was only an image on the permanent hard contact lenses fused with the front of her eyeballs. "Yes, thank you, July." She closed the window with a gesture, and leant down to one of the conventional technicians. "You can begin now, Aoba; start running him through the checks."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**27th of August, 2091**

"You know, Rits, it probably would make sense to get him to learn how to stand up on his own," Misato said, as they waited, once again, for the superheavy lifters to pull the Unit back up to an upright position, the cables tied to it straining under the tension of a forty metre high arcanocyberxenobiological monstrosity. At least it was a nice day down in the Geocity. Of course, when one controls the entire moisture cycle of a self-contained self-sufficient sphere with a false sun, there is very little excuse for not knowing what the weather will be like. Even in the British Isles.

"Yes," the scientist snapped back. "And when he's capable of the complex series of motions required to get him to stand up on his own, he won't be falling over so much."

"At least he's doing it less."

"Yes, that is something."

Misato threw the other woman a sideways glance. "You're just annoyed that he's damaging the paintwork, aren't you?"

"You're one to talk, getting irritable about people damaging your paintwork. And, no, for your information," the blond added, "we're specifically using the test paint, not the standard deployment camouflage. It's easier to check for cracks."

"It is very... purple. Except when it is very green," said Misato, solemnly. "Looks almost like an A-War 1 Vadoni."

"Same type of paint, actually," Ritsuko admitted.

"Makes sense."

There was a pause.

"So, how long do you think he's going to last this time? He's been improving... I'd say he's going to last," Misato wobbled her hand from side to side, "...hmm... half an hour, as long as he doesn't have to run."

"Misato! We are not starting a betting pool, especially when sensitive and, yes, potentially breakable military equipment is involved!" snapped Ritsuko.

_You might not be, but I'm already ahead against the Operators,_ is what Misato Katsuragi very much did not say.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**1st of September, 2091**

The weather outside had apparently stayed clear for over a week; something that the hazard teams in charge of the clean-up after the battle against Harbinger-3 had been thanking whatever deities they believed in. Already, the debris was largely cleared, the contaminated, chromatically-drained areas demolished and the remains reprocessed into blocks. Some were fated to be used; there was certainly a use for such a material, but inevitably with such vast quantities produced, most would simply be deposited in underground storage facilities, ironically used as shielding and containment for Colour production facilities. It was important to distinguish chromatically-drained regions from arcanochromatically contaminated substances; the former were merely dead, anathema to 1-state life, while the latter contained traces of the Colour, which could contaminate other things, and breed. The slightly... off nature of vegetation in many parts of the world spoke of improperly contained Colour.

The concerns of clean-up were not exclusively concerned with such arcane matters. There were also more conventional worries; munitions did not have a 100% successful detonation rate, and vast quantities had been hurled at the monster, let alone the ones which missed, their smart systems safely disarming the dangerous weapons, leaving them littered across the ruins of Old London.

For that reason, more than a few illicit organisations had been expressing interest in the area of the conflict. One of the major restrictions what could be produced by the kinds of nanofactories available to civilians, and even most private groups, was the limits on arcanotechnology in all its myriad forms. And a major component of almost all arcanotechnology was variant r-state elements, the so-called elem-n-ents. Compared to the amount that could be obtained by breaking open D-Cells, to extract the minuscule amount of elem-n-ents in the superconducting battery, the existence of a vECF warhead was a motherlode.

The New Earth Government was quite aware of the fact that there were people interested in such things, of course. A restricted state of martial law was still in effect, under the Environmental Safety Act of 2084, and a truly comprehensive network of security cameras and CATSEYE scanners (the latter to detect the presence of warding sorceries designed to obstruct electronic or human-visual detection) had already been set up as a perimeter. LAI-controlled drones, the car-sized bulk nevertheless hard to see, as their colour shifted to match the background sky, hovered, armed and permitted to fire upon invalid persons within the excluded zone, guiding patrols of armoured vehicles and powered armour.

Sadly, this was Old London. A city which had been the site of population for millennia, a dead metropolis lying on the corpses of its ancestor-selves. It was not exactly short in underground routes, and, although the extranormal-entity-infested remnants of the old Underground network were sealed off, it was not as if anyone capable of surviving a trip through the expansive catacombs down there was not capable of making their own way out.

In the filthy, vile-smelling darkness, a middle-aged woman knelt, fingers pressed into the dark mud. She was of Indian sub-continent origin, that much was certain, but beyond that... there was an uncertainty about her features; something slightly blurred, as if there was a thick layer of glass that moved to cover her, no matter which angle one looked at her from. "Death..." she muttered softly, to her companions. "Rot... carcass, multiple days dead." She nodded. "Our contact is here."

The teenage _amlaty_ beside her, waif-like in her proportions, but similarly blurred, gripped the almost-comically-oversized submachine gun in her hands tighter. "Sure?" she asked, a hint of a Nazzadi accent in her voice.

"Yes."

"Good, 'cause, well, we've been looking for him for too long. I don't like it down here. It... tastes bad, smells bad, you know what I'm saying? I just want to get outside, out into the proper air."

"I'm less sure about the taste... but, yes. I just hope we get to him. There are too many butterflies flapping around up there. They've got their own sources, but they know we'll be after it."

"You know we can go when we find our contact, Many, and not any sooner."

The girl slumped. "Yeah, I know."

The woman stood up, adjusting the strap on the rocket launcher slung on her back (a cumbersome weapon, especially in such tight quarters), and pointed down one of the paths splitting from the intersection. "This way. Not too far."

'Not too far' in this case involved half a kilometre of slow, ponderous climbing down old maintenance hatches, as the scent of rotting mud and sewage grew stronger. This wasn't a place for convenient bioluminescent bacteria or faintly glowing magic crystals; this was a made place, the only light coming from the all-too-irregular emergency lights, which remained embedded in the flesh of this dead city, kept alive by... someone.

And then they found their contact. Sprawled on the ground lay a body several days dead, the bloated rigidity speaking of clotted blood in veins. There was not even the mercy of an intact funeral for this man (not that bodies were buried nowadays; they were broken down into their raw materials, as a precaution against the myriad uses there were for an intact corpse); _things_ had obviously feasted on his body, the flesh gnawed off and the guts picked out. That was not the thing that the two women were paying attention to, though; there were moving shapes packed around the edge of the room, pale, leathery-skinned things, with a canine set to their features. They were clad in clothes so covered in the filth of the down-below, that their original garments were almost invisible, under the layers of caked-in muck. In the light, their teeth, thin, dagger-like things, the teeth of a carnivore on a too-wide jaw, gleamed.

But their eyes; their eyes, in blues and greens and browns, were all too human.

The older woman broke into a grin. "Ah, Christopher!" she said, to the largest of the needle-toothed ghouls, as she looked at the stacked piles of military-grade munitions, high-explosive and microfusion warheads stacked on top of each, while utterly ignoring the commonplace sight of the body. "You have done well. I think that's enough to have earned your bonus... if they're all intact. If they're not, of course, and you're trying to cheat us, I'll have to set Mantodea on you, but... it looks hopeful. We will be able to use this to _good_ ends."

The monster echoed the smile, pieces of flesh caught in his stinking mouth. "I am not dumb. I will not lie to you," it gravelled, the words made in the back of its throat. "I do not want to die."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Shinji looked around Misato's apartment, and stretched, aching muscles still sore from the extended periods spent in the entry plug. The control chair wasn't actually uncomfortable, it was not as if the New Earth Government or the Ashcroft Foundation were unfamiliar with the fact that being stuck in a fluid-filled capsule for hours at a time was not the most pleasant thing that one could be doing. The problem was that he had been stuck in it, for the majority of each day, for a week. And all that sitting down and thinking was really hard work.

Shinji was aware of how that would sound to a purely hypothetical observer capable of hearing his thoughts. Or a mind-reading parapsychic, who could actually be doing it. Either way, if they objected, he was going to hold their heads in a tank of LCL until they dro... _damn it!_. Hmm, he should think up some other ironic punishment.

Or he could just sit down, and do nothing for once. That was probably easier. At least he had got the apartment cleaned up, and therefore could actually touch the surfaces without his skin creeping. There really was no excuse for that. Seriously, had Misato never been taught to clean up after herself, or was she just a slob?

_No_, he corrected himself. _Had she never been taught to clean up for herself, _as well _as being a slob?_

Either way... Shinji groaned. He had been able to properly walk... uh, that is, he _while piloting the Evangelion_ had been able to properly walk since Sunday, which had been the first day he hadn't fallen down at all (which had, he was pleased to say, resulted in some compliments even from Dr Akagi and the technical staff, though, he frowned, Misato had seemed a little disgruntled, which was confusing), and now they had started weapons training.

_They don't seem to get how hard it is,_ he thought. _The control sticks interfere with fine manipulation with the hands, and it's hard to keep the chains of thought separate. Aim with the Evangelion, fire with the controls. It couldn't be worse if they made the thing have to pull some oversized trigger; at least then, I wouldn't have to think-pull my body-fingers, not the Eva-fingers. So what if I make a few mistakes?_

At least they had been feeding false sensory data to the Unit, as a form of a simulation. It would have been mortifying to have actually levelled a non-negligible area of the pseudo-arcology around the pyramid-structures. And in his defence, he had thought that the Ouranos Limited Information Tactical Analysis Network that was apparently the interface between the superconducting QUI devices on his head and the actual Evangelion, was meant to stop that kind of thing. And then he had been scolded by both Dr Akagi and Major Katsuragi for relying on an LAI for target discrimination, instead of thinking for himself, and things had gone downhill from there.

This entire thing was stupid. If they wanted proper, professional pilots, then they should have got them. And if they didn't want to do that, for whatever stupid reason, then they should expect him to act like a person forced into something that he didn't want to do because of his _father_ metaphorically offering him a carrot or a stick to pilot, and then threatening to stab him with the carrot.

Pulling out his PCPU, a scowl on his face, he flicked through the most recent squirt from the Japanese networks. At least he'd got his archives transferred over, and his muse operational, but it was still annoying, the fact that there was now a good ten minute ping for even pure text transfers over approved free channels, and up to six hours for more complex items, as the files were quarantined and checked by vast arrays of ghost LAIs. For someone used to near instantaneous links to everyone he knew, this was just another burden in the heavy weight that was a move to an unfamiliar place. Of course, it was possible to get faster transfer, and even live interaction; the condition was that you were willing to pay for it.

That was specifically relevant because there was a message from his foster mothers, demanding that he contact them, and telling him that he should pay for it, because they hadn't heard from him in two weeks.

_Ah._

_..._

_Ooops._

As the boy searched down his contacts list, and waited for the system to guarantee approval the request for a valid link, his thoughts were in turmoil. Very guilty turmoil. He really should have thought of that. He should have even told them that he was alive; they wouldn't even have known that he hadn't been caught up in everything that had happened... well, actually he had been caught up, but he hadn't been caught up _terminally_, and that was what was important, right? No... no, they had to know that he was alive, because he'd be getting a lot more worried messages, so someone, maybe his father, more likely someone else, had to have told them that he was okay. And when he thought about it, it was perfectly understandable that he had forgotten to contact them. First there had been the whole hospitalisation and the tiredness and the check-ups, and the almost immediately as soon as he had been let out, he had been in the training. He groaned. Fourteen hours down in the Geocity, and then another hour eaten up by travel. It was inhumane. He just wanted to collapse after the end of it. Well, he would certainly have a thing or two to say...

_Oh._

Oh. Yes. He was going to have to reassure them, without actually telling them anything. The lengthy secrecy contracts he had been forced to read and sign (and he had read them all, despite the growing irritation of the Deputy Representative as he poured over the fine print) had been quite clear about this; that, quite specifically, he was not permitted to tell **anyone** outside the Group anything about what he was doing without express consent from a very small list of people. This was going to be complicated.

Shinji Ikari seriously considered just hanging up, and working out what to do tomorrow, but by now the transfer had already been approved, and the hum of the pre-connection line activating had already started. It was probably better to apologise as soon as possible.

"Connection approved," said his muse, the emotionless voice clinical and precise. "Waiting for response from other end."

Shinji waited.

"Hello?" asked a young girl, in Japanese.

Shinji took a breath. "Hello, Hikary," he said. "It's Shinji. Can I talk to Yuki or Gany, please."

There was a pause on his end, as he waited for his six-year old foster sister to calm down.

"I've missed you too, Hikary," he said, patiently, once it had got a little quieter on her end of the phone. "But where are Yuki or Gany? I want to talk to one of them, please."

"Mummy's already left for work," the girl explained. "_Memany_ is getting Haruhy ready up stairs because she managed to spill food _all_ down her front, and make a mess _everywhere_!" The line crackled, the noise of what was almost-certainly-the-phone-being-swung . "She's clumsy and silly."

"Left for work?" Shinji paused. "Oh. Time zones." He sucked in a breath. Ah. Well... that was broadly keeping in with how well he had organised this. He was tired, for goodness sake. He was just lucky that the nine hour difference had bumped them forwards to... he checked his watch, okay, it was 08:26 there, if he added nine hours.

"Time zones?" the little _amlaty_ echoed. "Oh, I know all about them! We did them in _nosesukasi_! When it is mid-day in Toyko-_kei_, it is 9 at night the previous day in Chicago-_twi_ and twelve hours ago in Brasila-_twi_ and..."

"Hikary..."

"And it is three in the morning, but on the same day, in Londoni-_twi_, and..."

Shinji sighed. This was hard work. And actually quite impressive, if she'd memorised... wait a moment. "Hikary?" he asked. "Are you just reading them off the map in the hallway?"

"... which hallway?" asked a guilty voice.

"The downstairs one."

There was a patter of bare feet. "Nuh-uh! I'm not even in the hallway, so I can't do it. Unless I can see through walls. Oh. Oh! That would be so awesome. I could see everything on the other side, and then they couldn't see me!"

Shinji smiled to himself. "Okay, now, Hikary. I want you to go fetch _Memany_. She wants to talk to me."

"'Kay!" The patter of feet resumed. "Why aren't you here any more, Shinji?" she asked. "When are you coming back?"

He winced. "I did... um, well." He gave up. "That's one of the things I need to talk to _Memany_ about," he lied.

"'Kay!"

He could hear the fuss in the apartment, as Hikary's sister (it was complicated) protested. Shinji took a deep breath, which turned into a yawn despite his best efforts to suppress it.

"Hello?" he heard a voice say in Nazzadi-accented Japanese.

"Um... it's me," he managed, his jaw aching.

"Oh, someone remembered to check his PCPU," Gany said, her voice acidic. "You have had us worried _sick_... two weeks, and not a word, not even a message from you... it's Shinji, darling... and... no, he's fine, and isn't in trouble... _asisi_," she added, in a warning tone.

The boy winced. "_Da seraba resoreni_," he said, in a peace offering, switching to Nazzadi to prevent the younger two from being able to follow it properly. "_Da ginozakrona, pla dedifatabi ni soli salenitukasi._" He braced for the inevitable outburst that was to come. It really, really would have been easier to explain this to Yuki; she was less... volatile.

It did not erupt. "Hikary, Haruhy," he heard over the phone. "Go downstairs... I'll be down in a moment. And... Hikary, don't throw any more food at your sister, understand? I will find out, and if I do, you certainly won't be getting that Zinabi doll you wanted... no, no protests from either of you two. Okay? Good. I need to talk to Shinji, don't worry." She paused. "No, we're still going to make it to school on time. Good. Now... downstairs, please."

Shinji waited. The voice, once the noise of his foster-siblings had gone, was unnaturally controlled and calm; the kind of calm that speaks of a great deal of internal pressure. "What exactly do you mean that you were hurt, and that you had to spend time in the hospital?" Gany asked quietly, her accent thickening.

"It wasn't anything too major, " he hastened to reassure her. "Bruising... nothing broken. But... well, you know that a _thing_ happened on the day I arrived in L2?"

"Yes. It was all over the news. A maj... well, it certainly wasn't a _small_ extranormal incursion. It got worryingly close to the arcologies, before they managed to stop it." The woman made a tutting noise. "You think it's a _wonder_ we've been worried about you?"

"Uhm..." Shinji massaged that back of his neck, feeling an acute mixture of guilty and embarrassment. "Well, uh, I really didn't mean to worry you!" The words came out in a rush. "It's just a lot of things had happened... and my PCPU got broken, as in actually physically snapped, and I'm really sorry and I should have listened to you two when you told me that I should have got a soft one, not a hard one, and then it took several days to actually get a new one and get it to grab my archives and move it to the London severs and before that I had to prove that I was actually me, and that ended up taking a blood check to actually get a proof of ID before I could move my full archives here and... and I'm babbling, because I'm nervous, and I'm in a strange city and I'm not going to be able to move back and I've been worrying you and..." he choked.

"Shinji!" his foster-mother snapped. "Breathe! Stop talking!"

He gulped down a few breaths of air.

"I've only ever seen... well, heard you like this a few times before," she said, more calmly. "You don't normally go wobbly like this. Just... calm down."

Shinji breathed out, slowly. "O-okay."

"Listen, let's get the important things out of the way. You're physically fine, yes?"

"Yes. Yes. It's all healed."

"Good. And you're feeling all right? That is, you're not feeling any more wrong than you should be feeling, when you've suddenly been moved to a new city?"

_No_, he thought, _but I can't explain any of it to you._ "Yes," he lied. "I... I think it might just have been hearing your voice."

"Sure, Shinji." There was doubt in her voice, but it was a generalised, unfocussed suspicion. "And you're getting on all right with Gendo? Uh," she corrected herself, "with your father?"

_Well... where do I start? Oh, let's start a week ago, last Wednesday_, Shinji thought, angrily. _The day after I got out of the hospital. He didn't come visit me once while I was actually in there. Not once! Oh, I'm sure he checked my records. He didn't want one of his _precious _prospective Test Pilots to suffer too many complications. But once I'm out, then he demands to see me... in fact, he orders Misato to drive me there! That's monstrous! If he wanted me off balance when he saw me, then that's possibly the best way to do it. He knows I get motion sick!_

Shinji paused in his mental rant, and took a metaphorical breath.

_And then, and then, he sits me down in his obviously-designed-to-be-intimidating office, along with his second-in-command, and tells me that 'it is necessary' that I become a permanent pilot, and so __I'm being moved to here for the indefinite future. I get told that there are two ways I can do this; I can be a 'test pilot', and get paid and a more normal life, or I get basically held as a research subject, or whatever was going to happen. Well, of course I took the first one, and then I had to sign lots of things explaining everything. And then got dragged immediately off to get a proper plug-suit fitted. That's all I've seen of him, apart from the occasional glimpses in the building. I've been forced into being a child soldier by my father, who doesn't even seem to care that I exist apart from this. Oh, we're getting on just fine, thank you very much._

He longed to say all this, to let it out in one vast outpouring to Gany, but, of course, he couldn't.

"Yes," he said.

"And can you say anything apart from yes?" The tone was joking.

"Yes..." The boy made an annoyed noise at the classic linguistic trap. "Um... I mean, certainly." He smiled, before the smile turned into a yawn.

"Oh, yes, it must be pretty late over there, mustn't it?" said Gany, rhetorically. "Well... it was nice to know that you're alive and well, but I have to..." there was a pause as she checked the time, "Okay, I _really_ have to get the girls to school, before I have to go to work. So... well, I'll talk to Yuki, and we can get a proper talk when it's better for both of us, and _keep in touch_. The feed time isn't bad for pure text, anyway, so you have no excuse for not doing so. I want to hear from you at least twice a week, okay?"

Shinji nodded. "Okay."

"And you will remember this, right?"

"Yes. Yes, I will."

"I will be sending messages to check that you do, if you don't."

"I know," he said, a slightly harassed tone entering his voice. "I promise."

"Good. Well, then, it was nice to hear from you, Shinji. And the girls have been missing you," she added, a note of sadness present. "Okay, then. Goodbye."

"Goodbye." The connection ended.

Shinji let his hand fall, and stared at the PCPU, tired eyes vacant.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**4th of September, 2091**

The purple and green of the Evangelion, still in the testing colour scheme, was bright in the false sunlight of the Geocity. The Unit was operating freely, this time permitted to roam as it wished, lacking even the superlifters and binding cables to right it should it fall.

Shinji removed his hands from the joysticks, and carefully willed his hands, specifically, to move. The fact that the Evangelion did not mimic the gesture was proof that he was managing to keep the trains of thought separate; that was a good thing. There had very nearly been an accident, the day before yesterday. But at least he'd managed to stop in time, and from the remarks that Dr Akagi had made, some other Test Pilot hadn't.

He could feel the viscosity of the LCL through the thinner material over his hands as he massaged his face, feel the difference between the soft flesh of his face, and the hardened cowl that wrapped around the rest of his head. They said that it was there to stop him breaking his neck if the Evangelion was thrown about excessively, and provide a more secure mounting for the A-10 superconducting QUI devices. Which was, in Shinji's opinion, not at all reassuring, given that he'd already been thrown around to a degree which was certainly excessive; it had been bad enough to fight a horrible giant monster-thing, but to know that he'd been at risk of breaking his neck throughout was almost embarrassing.

Admittedly, it was not as embarrassing as having to wear the breathing apparatus each time he climbed out of the Evangelion, being fed a supply of LCL until he could get it removed properly. The orangey-red fluid was not only vile (almost unutterably so), but too viscous for the lungs to cough up without possible damage to the fine structure, so every time he went back to breathing air, it meant that he had to connected up to that machine, which temporarily shut down his breathing (which was... strange) while it exchanged LCL for air. He had been told that it was possible to clear it naturally, but it was very unpleasant and potentially dangerous; after how, on that first day, he had seen the White (Rei, he thought her name was) choke on it, he was inclined to agree.

In fact, generally, Shinji had decided that a lot of things to do with the Evangelions were so stupid that they must have required geniuses to implement properly.

He lowered his hands back to the controls, and signalled that he was ready.

"Good morning Shinji," said Dr Akagi, her face appearing in his left eye. She paused. "Oh... wait, is it still morning? Yes, yes it is. Just. Prompt with the ready signal as always, I see." Her figure jumped sideways slightly, as if she had just been elbowed in the ribs. "Well!" she could be heard to mutter, before she looked back at him. "Today we'll be doing your first formal evaluation; complete with independent operations and a full firing drill. If you're deemed to have passed this, you will enter the Test Pilot programme properly, and be formally referred to as the Third Child."

Shinji nodded, reluctantly.

Ritsuko flicked onto the next page, wincing slightly, as she saw all the things that she had to read to him, for this to be a valid evaluation. "Okay. In this evaluation, you will be piloting Evangelion Unit 01, the Test Model of the "Evangelion" series of arcanocyberxenobiological Titan-grade capital-class humanoid combat war machines." The scientist took a deep breath. "The Evangelion Units utilise a standardised configuration of six DEV12/DDV13 Dimensional Engine / Dimensional Refrigerator pairs in the torso, with a further one in each limb. This has the function of balancing the constant power of the D-Engine with waste heat produced. This means that... you will not be mandated to observe heat levels in this test." Inwardly she groaned. There were pages of this stuff, old warnings and instructions dating back to the first tests with arcanotechnology, which had accumulated like sedimentary rock over sixty or so years. Like these heat warnings. They may once had made sense before the D-Refrigerator (or D-Dump, as it was more commonly, if inaccurately, called) was invented; a thermodynamically violating perfect refrigerator which fed heat back into the same source where the D-Engine drew it from (it was, after all, a D-Engine run in reverse), but now, it was just detritus. And, worse, as the Director of Science for the Evangelion Group, the regulations insisted that she, as head of the science team, personally read them to any new candidate, as opposed to simply have a text-to-speech programme do it. How annoying.

She was going to petition that a committee was set up to deal with this, that was for sure. There was _no way_ she was going to have to do this again.

Further back, the Director of Operations was congratulating herself on having dodged this task, by the medium of job descriptions. Normally her job description forced her to do things that she didn't want to do; it was a too-rare event that it saved her from something like this.

"Are you worried, Major Katsuragi?" asked an elderly voice from behind her.

The black-haired woman glanced back. "In all honesty... no, Deputy Representative," she said to the white-haired man, shaking her head. "This is pretty much a triviality... we've seen that he can pilot, and whether he passes this time or the next one, he's going to be the Third Child." She paused. "From what I've heard," she added, picking her words carefully, "the previous failures have all been early; they've washed out after at most two or three sessions." She shrugged. "Haven't even got as far as walking."

Fuyutsuki was silent for a moment. "Yes," he said, eventually. " That's broadly true... a few have got a little further, and dropped out for other reasons, but... yes."

"And, anyway..." Misato added, "... we've seen that he's fully capable of piloting when pushed to it. Really, if things were going to have gone wrong, they'd have gone wrong when Harbinger-3 showed up." She licked her lips. "I mean, sir, that was basically the worst possible time for a first test... from what Ritsuko has told me, at least. He'll be fine under these calmer conditions."

The pair listened to Ritsuko's mechanistic reading of the safety precautions, and the more lively technical babble among the technical staff.

"Is Representative Ikari still in Chicago-2?" Misato asked.

The old man nodded. "Yes. He has to liaise with another Group, and he has more reports to make in person to other Representatives, and to the Cabinet in person. There's still a lot of fallout from the Asherah Incident; the NEG is," he smiled, faintly, "somewhat disturbed by the appearance of a Harbinger."

"It's just..." Misato paused, "I would have thought that he would have been here for... this."

Fuyutsuki shook his head. "The Representative and his son don't get on," he said, a guarded expression on his face. "Before that day, they hadn't seen each other in years, hadn't lived together since Yui... his wife, Shinji's mother died. And," the man winced, "the events of the last month haven't done anything to endear Gendo to the boy."

"Oh."

"I know." Fuyutsuki winced. "It's a shame, but... when you look at everything, what is one more minor tragedy?" He gazed up at the screen with eyes which had seen the events of the last seventy-two years, seen the wars that had reduced the human population from a peak of over eight billion to just over two billion, and the appearance of monsters which none would have believed possible. "Nothing on the cosmic scale."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The technical and scientific staff were pouring over the data from the test.

"The tweaks to the pilot profile seem to have fixed the stability issue, once and for all," declared Cela, one of the civilian Operators, with a proud glint in his purple eyes.

That, naturally, drew an immediate counter from Lieutenant Cheung. "You mean, of course, that, _from the available data_, it appears that the anomalous synchronisation spikes have been fixed, of course," she said, her voice cold. "Or, at the very least, have not reoccurred in the time period that we are dealing with."

"That's what I said! You're just inserting in semantics which were implied by the use of the word 'seems'!"

"Yes, because implications are _so_ very useful for precise arcane engineering!"

Maya sighed to herself. This happened every single time those two spent any time in the same room. No matter what the topic, it degenerated into petty bickering and semantics. And they seemed remarkably resilient to the logical (or at least narrative) conclusion of this kind of tension, preferring just to maintain a just-below-the-borderline-of-unacceptable level of mutual disdain. "What do you think, Dr Akagi?" she asked out loud. That was the most sensible option, if they wanted to cut this pointless argument off; the Director of Science would know. She always did.

Ritsuko was staring up at the waveform, her fingers flying through augmented-reality projections only she could see. "Yes," she said, tilting her head to one side. "It is holding a lot smoother. After the initial start-up, we have a nice stable 56.1 +/- 4.2 % synchronisation... which, incidentally," she added, "... is still amazing me, even after a few weeks. He's talented, certainly. No..." she corrected herself, "talented implies learning. Test Pilot Soryu is talented. He's gifted."

"The replacements after the damage taken against Asherah have been integrated perfectly," added Lieutenant Hyugi, continuing the previous line of discussion. "The slight dislocation fracture suffered in training the day before yesterday was found to be due to improperly-bonded rods in the endoskeleton; they have been resunk, and the problem did not recur today."

"And the Ouranos reports that the Evangelion has adjusted to the enhanced regime of immunosuppressants and regrowth inhibitors, after the incident against the Harbinger," said Lieutenant Aoba. "It does, however, suggest that this should be something we should keep an eye on. It seems that, at times of stress, the Unit is capable of exceeding its natural restrictions, beyond the abilities of the systems to keep it under control. This is... alarming."

"True. It will be necessary to look into this further... which will be hard, as Unit 02 has not exhibited the same behaviour. This is an anomaly." Ritsuko paused. "What do you think, Misato? Not specifically on that, but in general," she added.

"Well, speaking as Director of Operations," the Major said, leaning against the wall, "I don't feel happy clearing him as having passed the initial training phase. He needs another week of full-time practice, at minimum."

"Really?" Ritsuko raised her eyebrows, echoed by surprised noises from the other staff.

"Yes. His synchronisation scores may be excellent, but tactically? Tactically, he's a child in a massive mecha with too much firepower for me to feel comfortable about it." The Major's words were clinical. "He doesn't have any kind of combat instincts, and that's not surprising. Just watch the actual performance, as opposed to the technical aspects. He freezes, he hesitates too much, he takes too long to aim; all classic signs of an untrained mecha pilot. Speaking now as an officer in the NEGA, I wouldn't want him supporting my troops with his current capacities. The Ouranos LITAN can't compensate for an untrained pilot."

Ritsuko sucked in a breath. " Well, I suppose..."

"I have already consulted with Captain Martello," the Major continued. "Compare the Third Child's performance to the data he forwarded on the most recent test for Unit 02; an actual live-fire test on the Eastern Front. The difference is immediately obvious. And any NEGA officer familiar with mecha will be able to see it."

"That is true," Dr Akagi said, with a nod. "I'll forwards the recommendation to Deputy Representative Fuyutsuki. Looks like we have another week of intensive training," she added, to the Operators and the technical staff in the room. "At least." A generalised, non-local groan could be heard. "Now... I have a few things I want to look at from the black-box, and discrepancies with the feed..."

"Just one more thing though, Rits," Misato said to her friend after the end of the meeting, as they were leaving. "Can you..." she sucked in a breath through her teeth, an embarrassed look on her face, "can you sort of put it to Shinji that this is for technical reasons? Please?"

The scientist paused, frowning. "Why?" she asked.

"Ah. Well. Um." Misato stared blankly at the blond. "It's kind of... uh."

Ritsuko fixed her with a level gaze, one flat-shoed foot tapping against the ground.

"Well, you don't have to live with him!" Misato finally managed. "He's basically taken over the house! He leaves politely written notes on any bottles or cans I leave lying around, and makes me feel guilty. He emptied out the main sections of the fridge of my noodles and stuff, as he said that, if he was going to have to do the cooking...

The foot had stopped tapping, frozen in mid-air. "Did you make him do all the cooking, Misato?" interrupted Ritsuko, in a slightly shell-shocked tone of voice.

"He volunteered, if I would keep the nanofac loaded. He seemed," she frowned, "oddly happy about persuading me to do that, even when it's a lot more work." She shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe he likes cooking." She frowned as Ritsuko laughed, for some reason. "What?"

"Oh, nothing," said the blond, with a smirk. "No, really, it's nothing. It's... it's scientist humour."

"The kind that's not actually funny, you mean," said Misato, with a hint of a pout.

"The kind that needs a sound foundation in the sciences before the more refined elements can be appreciated," corrected Ritsuko near-automatically.

"So... what I said."

"No... but, what were we talking about?"

There was a pause. "He's taken over the house!" said Misato, again, the mock-outrage and real-embarrassment fresh again. "I don't want to have to take the blame for making him go through another week of training, so can you just say something about needing more synchronisation testing...it's... it's not funny, Rits. Really, it's not!"

"Sure... sure it is-is-isn't," managed Ritsuko, before she gave way completely. "I-I-I just think it's h-h-hilar..."

Misato crossed her arms, and held her face perfectly level, the image of the sainted martyr.

It didn't help.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The girl was almost invisible in the hospital bed, surrounded by whiteness. Only the haemoglobin-red which had seeped into the bandages over her ruined eye, and a slight hint on the thinner skin around her mouth and visible eye, gave her any semblance of human life, that she was flesh and blood, rather than a marble statue. Even her breathing was barely visible, a slight slow flow of the blankets. And she was alone. There were no nurses in here. After the issues with the unexpected rejection of the first transplanted eye, they had decided that she just needed rest, to build up her strength, before they would try again.

"Yes, Representative Ikari," she said softly, voice almost inaudible, in response to the question from the face on the screen before her.

"And your opinion?" asked the glassed man.

"He has a talent for synchronisation. His mean synchronisation ratio is 29.3% better than mine, with a standard deviation 4.6 % better. However, his training is inferior. Major Katsuragi will not pass him."

Gendo nodded. "Correct. It is satisfactory."

Rei sat up slightly, a slight wheeze of breath the sign of the exertion. "It is?" she asked.

"It is."

"Then it is satisfactory, Representative," she said instantaneously, her words almost overlapping with his.

The man looked at her in silence. She gazed back, unmoving. "How are you feeling, Rei?" he asked.

"My right eye remains absent. They are preparing another transplant, and the operation will occur on the 7th of September. They have attributed the failure of the first to correctly connect to the optical nerve to a flaw in the growth." The girl paused. "I did not correct them. It was not necessary," she said, with a slight tilt of her head.

"Good, Rei." Gendo Ikari could be seen to relax slightly. "But I did ask how you were feeling."

"The combination of arcanetherapeutic-aided cellular regrowth, and the limited amounts of pain-inhibiting compounds which I am permitted have ensured that I am currently in limited discomfort. I can tolerate it with ease. I have suffered worse. Yesterday is an example of a day when I have suffered worse," she added, with a straight face.

"So you are feeling better, then?" Gendo asked.

Rei paused for a long while. "It still hurts to breathe," she said, eventually. "The alveolar damage has not healed. But, yes, I am better."

The man looked at her, noting the stained bandage over her eye. _Yes, she does look better than before,_ he thought. _Even if..._

The pale girl coughed, gasping with the sudden pain. "I am aware of that," she said, attentively.

Gendo frowned, blinking in confusion. "What was that a response to?" he asked. "I have not asked any more questions." Perhaps Rei was not as well as she had looked, if she was still doing that. He might have to tell them to reduce the dosage of painkillers, if she was getting detached from the present.

She simply stared at him, head tilted slightly. It was not pleasant to see that familiar face with the repressed pain evident in the way that her jaw was set.

"How are you keeping up with your school work?" Gendo asked, almost as a triviality.

"I have completed all the tasks set of me by the teachers. The cover story that I was involved in a car accident is holding. There has been one bouquet of flowers, and twenty-five "Get Well Soon" messages. Of those messages, twenty-three were sent under coercion. One was from an individual from whom I have had to repeatedly turn down mating requests."

Gendo paused for a moment, squinting slightly. "You mean he was asking you on a date, Rei?" he asked with a hint of trepidation.

"Yes." She paused, for just a beat too long to be quite comfortable. "He is genetically unsuitable," she added, coldly.

"Rei," Gendo said, in a warning tone.

"I understand. I will avoid such things. As instructed."

"Yes." The man frowned at her. "Try to get some more rest," he commanded the girl.

"I will try." Rei paused, her one eye locked on the Representative's face. "You should not talk to me. You are late for your meeting with Director Wade. She is not late yet, but she will be."

Gendo managed to keep his expression calm, as he cut the connection.

Rei Ayanami lay back on the bed with a slight gasp, as stiff muscles screamed their warnings. Slowly, a hand went up to her empty eye-socket, palm flat against the bandage. Her lips moved, as she mouthed something, but no words came out.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The man with the newly trimmed short brown hair fumbled in his pocket for his PCPU, a muttered curse emanating from his mouth when he realised that he had left it inside the house. Sighing, he turned around, belatedly patting his other pockets, in the hope that he might find it. No such luck.

What he did find, however, was a slip of paper.

_I remember you, Mr Habegger_, it said.

The man's heart ran cold, and he dropped the scrap of white, which fluttered to the ground like a chicken coming home to roost.

~'/|\'~


	5. Chapter 4: Interconnections

**Chapter**** 4**

**Interconnections / As if calamity had but begun**

**AEON**

~'/|\'~

"_The Army has requested that I speak to you about the role of the mecha in the combined arms of the NEGA. But, frankly, I know that you already know it. So I'm going to talk to you about something else, and something that I'm really rather good at. Psychological warfare. Yes, some might think that against the foes we face, that's foolish. But even inhuman monsters have their breaking points, and... well, more human ones are even more flawed. Look at the symbol on my beret. Do you wonder we took that as an emblem? It's a translation of what the Nazzadi Loyalists call us. _Soli Vodili Dexti_. And now? Now they fear us. The same tactics apply to the Dagonites, and more so; Deep Ones are far more mentally vulnerable than the Migou, and we've managed to pick up a lot more about what they believe. Even the monsters of the Rapine Storm have their own primitive taboos, though they are often nonsensical. Break their minds, break their will to fight, break everything they hold precious and leave them in the midst of a ruined landscape, only with the knowledge that we took everything but their lives, because we could._

_And then kill them. Because that's the other thing about psychological warfare. It is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The end is the preservation of mankind. Never forget that. I personally will have any officer of mine who crosses over into petty sadism court-martialed, and I would want them to do the same for me."_

Colonel Oxanna Kristos, New Earth Government Army  
"Lectures to [REDACTED]"

* * *

**13th of September, 2091**

"Shinji, we need for you to catch that aircraft! We can't let it roam free like that!" shouted Dr Akagi. "Aim at the centre of the target, switch on, and then fly after it! Bring it back, and we'll give you your own car!"

"But I don't know how to fly!" Shinji protested. "And I don't want a car!" He checked the rifle in his bluish-grey and purple hands, and aimed it at the target.

"No, don't shoot it, Shinji," ordered Misato. "Do a barrel roll! It'll disrupt the flight feathers of the plane, making it easier to catch. If you fall too far behind, I'll have to drive you so that we can catch up!"

"I can't fly! Please don't drive!"

"Shinji, catch the aircraft!"

"Shinji, walk! Put one foot after the other. Don't fall down, or your father will have to pick you up."

An Evangelion-sized Gendo Ikari (the same height as him, it might be noted), winked at him, and threw set another aircraft free, flapping its wings in a cloud of blossom-like feathers.

"Shinji, jump. If you jump, you can fly to the moon. That will give you a tactical advantage. Remember the rules of camouflage; Shape, Shine, Shape, and Shadow!"

"This makes no sense! I can't fly! Why are you making me pilot, anyway?"

Suddenly, alarms went off and all the lights went off (the two phrases somehow meaning exactly the opposite), the emergency signs painting everything in shades of red.

"Filling the chamber with LCL!" shrieked Dr Akagi. "Shinji, you need to drown!"

The LCL was dark and viscous, and tasted of blood and metal and oil. He was stuck in here, floating, as the sirens grew louder and louder, the red light swirling madly over the inside of the entry plug. "Let me out," he tried to yell, but only bubbles came out, and he swallowed more LCL. Even the red emergency lights died, trapping him floating in darkness, even as the warning grew louder and louder.

The clarion call of the alarm sirens blended into the bleeping of his alarm clock, and Shinji groaned under the covers. He didn't want to get up. They'd let him have yesterday off, after he'd managed to pass the evaluation (apparently he'd improved enough for Dr Akagi to pass him this time), and it was nice. He wanted to sleep. And do nothing.

Then his muse started berating him, and telling him that he needed to get up. And turned on the lights.

_I will hunt down the person who devised this kind of LAI, and something something something..._ were his incoherent thoughts, as he rolled out of the bed with a thud, failing to get his legs in the right position to not crash onto the floor. _It's wrong for a thing to be able to do things like this thing is doing._

Technically speaking, he could turn that feature off, if he wanted to miss school. That was the flaw in doing so.

"Well done. Perhaps you would like to have a shower before you get dressed?" the muse said, choosing an appropriate response from its vast heuristic library. Muses weren't self-aware, but when they were connected up to the Grid, given sufficient processing power, and had been attuned to a user's preferences (especially a high end model like this one; a fourth birthday present which had been continually upgraded since then), it was hard to tell the difference. It paused, a mechanistic beat. "Would you like me to connect to local news?"

"Do it," he said, rubbing his eyes, as he stumbled off to the toilet.

"...the leader of the Federalist Alliance, Alan Alva Casto, argued that the proposed changes fundamentally altered the balance of power between the New Earth Government as a whole, and the Regions, and was another example of the centralising instincts of Unionist politicians."

The voice switched to that of a man, with a notable Spanish accent. "This is yet another slow, creeping attempt to crush the autonomy of the regions, to break the freedoms that can be traced all the way back to the reformation of the League of Nations in 1946, and implement... no, to _enforce_ the unstoppable desire for homogeneity of the Unionists!"

The newsreader continued. "President Nyanda, however, rejected the allegations, and cited the fact that opinion polls have shown that over two thirds of the population are in favour of the move to standardise election procedures between Regions, especially following the recent scandal in Madagascar, which commentators are already calling 'Vice for Votes'."

Shinji was by now feeling vaguely human, in more than a genetic sense. Splashing water over his face, he stared, bleary-eyed at himself in the bathroom mirror. He felt drained, still exhausted despite the inactivity of yesterday, and his appearance, washed out in the overly-bright lights reflected that. He pinched himself in the cheek. No, sadly, he was awake, and this wasn't just a dream. Because, if this was a dream, it would mean that he was still asleep, and thus would be less tired when he actually woke up. The fact that he briefly contemplated whether one would feel more rested if they were capable of sleeping in their dreams was probably just a sign that he wasn't fully awake yet.

He couldn't hear the sound of Misato moving around, which meant that she was probably still asleep, or possibly just hadn't come home last night. He suspected the former. Either way... it really wasn't that nice of her to not be there to say goodbye, given that he was starting a new school today. It didn't matter that there was a security detail waiting to guide him to the place for the first time. It was the principle of the thing.

Let's see. If he put on breakfast on a slow prep, he would have time to have a shower, and get dressed, before it would be ready. He'd feel better after a shower.

By the time he sat down at the now-cleaned (and it would stay this way, if he had anything to say about it) table, he almost seemed like a different boy, still-wet hair flattened down. He was, by now, barely phased by the fact that a giant albino emperor penguin, holding a towel in its hand... wing... _manipulator_ had confronted him as he left the bathroom, and quite possibly complained at him, if he had understood the sequence of 'Wark!'s correctly. He would take his fights where he could win them. He would accept that understanding would indeed come with a price he did not wish to pay; that there were things in this universe, terrible, blasphemous things, which it was better not to know.

But... seriously, what was up with the penguin?

That his thoughts were running like this was a sign that Shinji was nervous and the weight of the ballistic vest which they were making him wear under his shirt was just a reminder of things that he didn't want to think about. He adjusted the high collar of the black overjacket, still stiff, and checked yet again that the things which needed to be in his pockets were there. Civic Ident card. Ashcroft Ident card. PCPU. Emergency contact PCPU. Keys. Wallet (it would make much more sense to put the cards in the wallet, he realised, and so he did). Unlimited use travel card (even if he wasn't planning to be using it today). He'd had all the forms filled out for him, digital and physical alike. He'd put the print-outs of the digital transfer forms in his bag yesterday, and a check revealed that Pen-Pen hadn't eaten them, even if the penguin had been so inclined.

Silently, he thanked whoever had designed the uniform to have so many pockets, and loosened the too-stiff neckline to allow him to actually eat properly, and began to eat. Buying mainstay food from elsewhere was the province of the very poor, and the very rich; the former because they could not afford their own nanofactory, and the latter because they could afford to purchase things which were grown naturally. For the majority of the population, the basis of their diet came from a home nanofactory. Protein and carbohydrate chains were woven together into various structures, but the final quality of the product depended heavily upon the resolution and complexity supported by the nanofactory, and the detail of the template. And the time it took to prepare something grew rapidly with the complexity of the object. As a result, Shinji had been taught by his foster mothers to cook properly, taking simple raw ingredients (many of which could be found in opensource format, if you knew where to look on the Grid), and making something more easily and cheaply than having a long preparation complex cooked meal. Some people, and Shinji was not pointing fingers at Misato here, had obviously not; a trait only amplified by the fact that she seemed to use the cheapest, freeware meals, rather than actually buy a half-decent template.

None of this was really relevant, of course, when his breakfast was a heated nutrient brew that was only not described as porridge because it wasn't made out of oats, and was frankly really easy to make.

A shambling figure lurched in through the front door, clutching its arm, collapsing in the chair opposite to him, head lolling to the side. And then it stole his tea, emptying the mug in a single gulp.

"There's more tea in the pot, you know," he said, in a slightly disapproving tone. "And... um, I thought you were still asleep."

"I wish I was," grumbled Misato. "I was meant to have today off, but the one who was _meant_ to be observing the live feed from test for a new possible anti-orbital weapon, over in Test 9... that's in Australia... is tied up on the Eastern Front with a Migou counter-attack, and, of course," she said, her voice bitter, "I couldn't just watch it later, I had to be actively watching the weapons demonstration, so that I could comment on it." She tried to take another drink, before realising that she had already emptied the cup. "I mean, it didn't even work. The stupid primary ignition worked, but the testers told me that the blast shape was wrong. So I wasted an entire night, and then I had to listen as the testers through ideas, and watch the Operators feed data, and blah blah blah, let's stop Misato getting any sleep, ha ha ha."

"Ah," said Shinji, with his mouth full.

"I hate Australia," continued Misato, waving the thankfully-empty cup around wildly. "Who builds a continent so far away from normal time? Day is night, summer is winter... it's wrong. I wish I didn't have to deal with it ever again." Dragging herself upright, she stumbled over to the fridge, and grabbed herself a beer. "So, thanks to that, I've been up all night, it dragged on longer than expected, and because of that, it never seemed worth starting on the Extended Operations Enhancement, so this is pure tiredness. It sucks."

_Okaaa~aaaay_ thought Shinji. _We are not dealing with a rational thinker here._ Out loud, he said, "Well, there's tea in the pot, and there should be enough breakfast... or whatever meal it is for you..."

"Fourth dinner, I think. I hate third dinner. It's worse than second dinner. And fourth dinner is worse than that."

"... yes. Well, I made you some, because I thought you were asleep."

Misato grunted at him, nursing her beer. "Uh..." she said, yawning, "you should forget I mentioned this to you. It's still classified. And stuff." She yawned again. "Well... obviously, it's not classified that I'm tired... well, it is when I'm on active duty, but not otherwise, but the rest..." There was a third yawn, and Shinji felt his jaw ache sympathetically.

_You could have at least said 'Thank You',_ Shinji thought in a peeved tone, as he finished up his breakfast, and went to clean the plates. _And I bet you won't even clean up your plates or cans, and I'll come home to find the place a mess._

Picking up his bag, he glanced back into the dining room. The older woman, still in her uniform, was sprawled forwards onto the table, luckily-emptied beer can on its side. Sighing, and shaking his head, Shinji stepped out of the house, to where his security escort had told him to meet them.

* * *

Agent Mary Anderson smoothed down her long skirt, and recrossed her legs. "Yes, ma'am," she said, in response to the Deputy Director's query to her early morning report. "I've run the results through all the statistical tests I can think of. Within the limiting parameters I detailed in my report... that is, taking into account the post-mortem decomposition of the brains, and the like, I can give an R-squared of 0.61 that the two groups, the renegade ArcSec officers and the civilian insurgents, were in fact from separate organisations, and were furthermore, an R-squared of 0.53 that they were after separate objectives." She paused. "That is, separate illicit, cultist groups; I have already accounted for the different backgrounds of the individuals, with the models which I have detailed, again, in my report."

The Deputy Director ran a hand over her shaven head, and the hints of dirty-blond stubble growing through. There was something clinical in those fine-boned features, the freshly grafted skin still not sitting on them quite right, as she examined her subordinate. "Would you stake your career on those results?" she asked.

"No, of course not... with all due respects, ma'am," Agent Anderson said, shaking her head. "There's a limit to what a trawl can do, especially..." a faint sneer of professional contempt appeared on her face, "...especially when the degeneration of the neural structure and the presence of the arcanochromatic contaminants, which do terrible things to cellular integrity, are taken into account. If I'd got the same results from a live trawl, or better yet, a destructive map," she wobbled her hand, "well, I'd have been doing something wrong, frankly, to botch it that badly and get such a poor success rate. But, taking only the successful results, I'd be more certain if they were fresher. But these brains..." she shrugged, "... it's naturally limited in utility."

The other woman grinned. "Good," she said. "Too many people over-estimate the reliability of trawls, especially post-mortem ones."

"Again, with respect, ma'am, I suspect those people don't actually have to deal with the business of interpreting the structure of a rotting, Colour-contaminated brain."

There was a chuckle. "Oh, I'm sure." The woman passed an actual, physical folder of documents over to Agent Anderson; a rarity, but sometimes it was necessary to limit the propagation of information. "Look through this," she said. "I want your immediate impressions, your gut reactions."

The _amlaty_'s eyes automatically flicked to the contents page. "Is this related to the same case?" she asked.

"Just read."

There was a rustling of paper, and silence in the office for a few minutes. "Ikari," Mary Anderson said, slowly, choosing her words. "So... there is evidence which suggests that a possible target for the attack... for possibly one of the two attacks, was the son of the European Representative." She was gestured to continue. "Hmm..." she flicked through a few pages, "... the timeline fits; the flight he was on certainly arrived just before the attack. On the other hand... we have the contaminating factor of the simultaneous attack from the Harbinger entity." She looked at her superior. "I do not feel that the evidence from the trawls give me sufficient evidence to support either way. As a hypothesis, it might be possible that one group was after him, but there isn't enough evidence either way." She made an annoyed noise. "If only the Army hadn't had to use such a large arcanochromatic weapon and ruined the samples!" Mary coughed. "Of course, I'm being self-centred here," the _amlaty_ admitted.

The Deputy-Director smiled, the skin folding in ways which weren't quite right. "Yes, you are," she said. "We haven't been able to interview the witness yet... yes, we know he survived, and have been tracking him, but the Ashcroft Foundation," the words were said with a hint of contempt, "is being _obstructive_ with our attempts to interview him. He's been on the Grid, has transferred to the local Academy, and yet footage from the networks indicates that he spends almost all his time down in the Geocity, where we can't see him." She sighed. "We don't have uniform surveillance permissions down there; there are entire sections sealed off under NEGA or NEGN blocks. There are medical records attached to his profile, but they're only slight; mild bruising, nothing more, yet the Foundation is still blocking access to him. There has been... pressure to delay the questioning for as long as possible, and we're doing it, because there are other people we still need to track down, but," the woman blinked, black film-like layers sliding across her eyeball, her eyelids still not reconstructed from the damage, "... there is something _off_ about it."

Agent Anderson cleared her throat. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but... why are you telling me this?" she said, uneasily, folding her pale greyish-brown hands on her lap to stop them moving. "It isn't directly relevant to my current position; I'm a Cerebral Reconstruction and Information Structures Analyst, and unless you want to capture him and trawl him, I don't see how I can help."

The other woman snorted. "Of course not," the Deputy Director said, rolling her eyes. "We're not the OSS; we don't do that kind of thing. We are the Office of Internal Security. But... Agent Anderson, I notice that you haven't cross-trained into the occult; in fact, your file notes that you didn't even take a course in Occult Studies while at university. Why is that?"

Agent Anderson stiffened up. "I'm a neuroscientist by training," she said, calmly. "It is, quite literally, brain surgery. I didn't have time to take humanities options, and they found I had no talent for sorcery and no PP potential whatsoever when I was tested, so it seemed meaningless."

"Hmm," said the older woman, and it was precisely the word, not a noise in the back of her throat. "Mary," she said, relaxing slightly, "you have been with us for..."

"... just over four years."

"Yes. We recruited you straight from university. And I would strongly recommend that you book onto an Occultism training course."

Mary blinked. "But... but why?" she managed.

"There's a task force which is looking for a trained CRISAn and TSEAPer; you fit the criteria, but they demand that a candidate has passed the Oc103 module before they'd consider the candidate. And your work on this case, the fact that you've been getting some of our best results, has persuaded me, along with other contributing factors, that..."

The conversation was interrupted by the Deputy Director's muse. "Deputy Director Echo," it said, in a clipped, Nazzadi-accented voice, "a situation demands your attention. Systems drones have detected a series of events in Dome 046A which flag as an out-of-control parapsychic. Dome has already been locked down. Linking you to conference."

The woman swore, and waved a hand through the air, as AR projections popped up all around her. "Where's the nearest Containment team?" she asked to the floating heads. "Looking at the data I'm getting from ArcSec and my subordinate, we've got a ZZ09-Charismatic type... at least; look at the flash mob. We're going to want a soulless sniper with a full optical jack and loaded with both lethal and less-than-lethal for this, in case this goes south and we can't talk him into surrendering... and, looking at this, the negotiating team is going to have to be soulless, too. Damn it, a new eruption shouldn't be this powerful!" She ground her teeth together. "I hate mindworms. Could he be a Zoner?"

"We have an ID," reported the representative from ArcSec. "Hyun Young Ko, aged 56. Fired two months ago by Barletine Services... it's a minor IPcorp... and, look, headquarters in 046A. Not registered as a PP, no serious criminal record, on Level 1 Watchlist for purchases of occult tomes... nothing major, basic books on theory." The man paused. "Looking at his travel record... business trip to Paris-2 on 12/02/2091, and again on 01/04/2091. Nowhere near the Zone."

"When was the last time he was tested?" the Deputy Director asked, hands flying through the air. "Any latency?"

"Oh seven oh six ninety one," came back the result from Archives. "Minor possible latent abilities... but less than one SD above baseline... ah, but consistently so. He's on benefits, so has mandatory Orgone donation... oh, and look, he missed the last donation, and fizzled on the one before that."

"Damn. That should have tripped the scribe LAI flags... how did he pass under the net? A fizzle _should_ have bought him in for further testing, let alone a fizzle followed by a miss. I want a full audit on the centre responsible. Now, what's the response time for Containment..."

Inclining her head to her distracted superior, Agent Anderson let herself out. This meeting had raised some issues that she really needed to think about properly.

* * *

This Ashcroft Academy (one of several in the city) was located below ground, in one of the deeper of the honeycomb-like arcology domes which formed a mesh below the above-ground parts of the city. It was not, obviously, as deep as the Geocity; that was ten kilometres down, and the normal arcology did not even reach two. Nevertheless, the tonnes upon tonnes of earth and rock and concrete waiting to crush the inhabitants, if things went sufficiently wrong, was a disconcerting thought to those not familiar with such places.

Shinji Ikari, as a child of the 2070s, one who had lived his entire life in one arcology or another, didn't even think about it. It was, after all, how people lived. The majority of the population lived in these dense structures, built after the devastation which the First Arcanotech War, the Nazzadi Civil War, and the conflicts which had solidified the New Earth Government's control of the planet. Those people like Misato who owned a form of personal transport, whether one given motive force by an A-Pod, the pseudo-reactionless thrusters which pushed against the fabric of spacetime itself, or the far more common electric cars with their D-Cell superconducting batteries, were rare figures among those who actually lived in the newer pyramidal or underground arcologies. The inhabitants of the older sealed-building arcologies, or the open buildings that clustered around the cities and made up the Enclaves were more dependent on personal transport , but there just wasn't the space, let alone the need, when the public transport system was taken into account.

The maglev finished its long, looping spiral down, pulling into the station. Already, the automated voices playing the standard security messages could be heard from inside the complex. The other passengers, all clad in somewhat excessively bulky garments, in his compartment stood up, gesturing at him to stay seated. Shinji sighed. The way that the security detail had commandeered an entire carriage to the extent that they had moved other children, all in the same, high-necked black overjackets, out, had been really embarrassing. He could only hope that the somewhat sullen teenagers (and a few preteens) hadn't got a good look at his face, and had stepped behind the one of the bodyguards who had to be two metres tall, and built like a... well, he would have said, "built like an Evangelion", but when you looked at them, they were actually surprisingly slender, to try to ensure it. He was aware enough to know that a reputation as "the one who got you kicked out of your train carriage" was not a useful thing to have.

But he had mentally apologised to them, and that made it better, right?

Everything degenerated into the mundanity of security checks, of blood-testing and checks that he was a valid student here. This might have posed a problem, but the bodyguards had been remarkably persuasive... by which, he corrected, had actually known what to do. He could remember what the start of term was like at his previous Academy, and almost every year it was a nightmare, as all the new students choked up the scanners and the help desk, inconveniencing everyone. The only year it was different was the year in which you joined, when you were too busy panicking and running off to ask how to get the machine to accept your card, and not knowing where to go even with an automap, and... well, Shinji was just glad that school had been going since mid-August (the self-contained environments of the arcologies have broken the old seasonal terms), and that he had guides.

And, best of all, guides who weren't Major Katsuragi. So, guides actually worthy of the title. She had been taking him to the training in the last weeks. She was better than on that first time only because the automap features had not been shut off. At least he had now learned the way. And no more would he be doomed to see the same staircase section five times in one trip.

Stepping out of the white-lit maglev station (built on the outside of the dome, as not to waste space, as well as enhancing the security of the dome itself), Shinji blinked in the naturalistic light. And sneezed, as the floral scent suddenly became evident, as other students, a crowd of ravens swarming around him, chatted. It was quite obvious that whoever had planned the layout of the Academy had also been responsible of the Geocity; the technology was hidden in the same way, leaving grassy fields and even trees to grow inside the man-made structure, deep underground. Of course, here the nature had been tamed by playing fields , and, notably, the area used a proper light dome, rather than an arcanomagnetically confined burning fusion reaction (which would probably have cooked the school had they done so), but similar fingers on the worked clay shone through. The crowd of students, with only a few puzzled glances and a modicum of whispering at the figures that formed a cordon around him, were dispersing, off to wherever they had to go, while the bodyguards directed him to the main building, to the entrance area.

The man at the reception desk flashed a brief, almost flickering grin at him, and checked the Ident Card that Shinji offered. "Yes," he said. "All your paperwork has been filled out, forwarded, and been approved." He reached under the desk. "Let me just get you your introductory pack."

The boy blinked. "So... um, you don't need to see any of the transferral documents, or the residency permits, or the transferral forms, or the fee papers, or... or anything?" he asked, wrinkling his forehead.

"Nope."

"Are you sure?" he said, in a slightly perplexed voice. "I mean, I have them all here, in my bag... both the paper ones, and print-outs of the digital forms."

"No. They've been done."

"But... I spent quite a while filling them all out," said Shinji, in a plaintive tone. "Did... did I just waste a lot of the weekend doing that?"

The man nodded, with far more cheerfulness than the boy really thought was appropriate, as he handed over a translucent blue folder. "These are things like how to access the Academy Internal Grid, rules on the use of muses, setting passwords, rules and regulations... if you lose this, once you're on the AIG, it should be all in your profile. Remember to recycle it!" he added.

The boy slumped, and ran a hand through his hair. "Okay," he said. "So... where... what... um."

"It's in the folder. You've been assigned a class." The man looked more uncomfortable. "Your teachers will assign you remedial work if you're behind where you should be... though you're transferring from," he flicked his eyes down to the screen in front of him, "...yes, you're coming from one of the Tokyo-3 Academies, so the difference should be negligible."

Shinji coughed. "Well, first there was the move, and then I was ill," he said, using the 'agreed' cover story, "so I only really caught the first week or so."

"Oh." The receptionist managed, if it was possible, to look even more uncomfortable. "In that case, yes, you're going to have to catch up. It is the first year of your International Standardised Comprehensive Higher Aptitude Tests, after all, and... well, talk to your teachers. And good luck!"

Stepping outside, the boy shuddered. People should not be that enthusiastic, energetic and efficient this early in the morning. Looking around, the security detail had faded away, although, he felt that the cleaner pushing a mop around was rather bulkier, and in better shape than might be expected. He shrugged. He'd got used to the ever-present watchers back in Toyko-3, where they'd been there only because of who his father was; he would eventually get used to the fact that the guard had suddenly been radically increased, after he had protested, and fought to remain some normalcy. Shinji did not mention to himself that so far pretty much every such battle had ended up with him giving up, with only a nominal concession.

Coming up to the classroom door, having followed the signs to the right general area, Shinji swallowed hard, smoothing down his overjacket, feeling the plated ridges of the ballistic vest under it. A few deep breaths into cupped hands, and he was moving, swinging the door open.

Anticlimatically, none of the teenagers paid more a cursory glance to him, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Of course, that meant that there was no opportunity to explain, and ask what he should be doing. He _could_ go and ask one of them, go introduce himself, insofar as he was physically capable of such a deed, but instead, he chose to lurk by the door. After all, it was okay to be nervous on his first day here, and this way, when the teacher arrived, he could talk to... Shinji checked the folder... him immediately. To pass the time, he diverted his attention to the class, looking at his new classmates.

The first thing that struck him was the heterogeneity of the group, the variety of races in both the colloquial and biological sense; or, to put it another way, the mix of both ethnicities and subspecies. Just looking around, there were almost as many greyish-brown, the skin colour of the _amlati_, faces as there were ones which were purely pigmented by eumelanin or voumelanin. From that, Shinji could tell that the previous generation had been rather enthusiastic in the post-A-War 1 reconciliation efforts between the Nazzadi and _Homo sapiens sapiens_. More seriously, it spoke volumes about the socioeconomic makeup of his new school; intersubspecies breeding was many times more common in the higher wealth brackets than it was among the unskilled poor of both branches of mankind. The skilled, trained members of the Nazzadi invasion fleet had been integrated into the society of the newly formed New Earth Government relatively painlessly (and so had shown to their counterparts that the Nazzadi were just human); it was those whose skills were nothing but that talent for soldiering that the Migou had built into them who had suffered.

That wasn't surprising, of course. For all that the Ashcroft Academies prided themselves on their bursary and scholarship schemes, the simple fact was that the ones who they skimmed from mainstream education were always going to be in the minority, not least because the children who had been through the challenging educational regime since the age of five were always going to have had more opportunity, more accumulated educational advantage, than those not pushed to such heights. And the way that a disturbing number of students were themselves children of Ashcroft employees, or had parents who had been prenatally modified (as opposed to merely selected for) in that brief _belle époque_ of genetic engineering, a transhuman flower cut off at the stem by the First Arcanotech War, bought mutterings of a new aristocracy. The Ashcroft Foundation's denials, that as a highly selective employer, of course more of the children of their workers would meet their criteria, and that the children of people selected and tweaked for enhanced intellect would themselves be brighter, were unconvincing to too many.

As the son of Gendo Ikari, Shinji was largely deaf to those kind of accusations, and was rather more occupied with looking around somewhat desperately, hoping that someone would notice him and ask him what he was doing so that he could explain, as opposed to being worried about the socioeconomic privileges he took as a base assumption of his worldview.

"Excuse me?" asked a girl from behind him. Shinji turned and smiled somewhat desperately. "You're blocking the way," said a _nazzady_, red streaks dyed in the jet-black hair universal among the sub-species.

"Sorry," said Shinji, as he stepped aside. He tried not to stare at somewhat-lower-than-regulation neck of her uniform, nor at the sharply angular whitework tattoos which snaked downwards past her collarbone. "I'm sorry but..." he trailed off, as she swept past him without a second glance. "I don't..." He gave up.

At least the entrance of the other girl attracted some attention, as she sat down with a small cluster of both Nazzadi and xenomixes, of both genders, in the centre of the classroom, and a few more looked towards him. Finally (and Shinji breathed a sigh of relief), a pigtailed _amlaty_, her entire appearance (she, for one, was still wearing her overjacket, the collar fully done up) almost painfully precise, got up from where she had been talking with friends, and made her way over to him.

"Hello," he said immediately. "Uh... I'm Shinji, and I've... um, well, I've just transferred to the school, and the people at the reception... when I say 'people', I mean 'man', said I should go here. Um."

Inwardly, he cringed. _Okay. As an introduction, that could have been a lot better. And more precisely, less rambly... generally better._

Fortunately, the girl smiled at him. "Don't worry," she said. "It was mentioned towards the end of last week that we might be getting a transfer student. I'm the Class Representative; my name is Hikary Horaki."

Shinji paused, mental cogs automatically processing. _Okay, so that means that her parents' names were Hory and Aka... wait, not, she's xenomixed, so the scheme breaks down. It might be a surname, as opposed to the whole Nazzadi name-chain thing. Best not to make any assumptions. Wait, why am I getting distracted by this... oh yes, nervous. Focus, Shinji, focus. And not on the way that the overcoat suits her remarkably well._ Out loud, he said, "Well, okay." He paused. "Do you need to see this folder or anything?" he said, lifting it.

The xenomix shook her head. "No... let me just... aha," she said, checking her PCPU. "Yes, you've been added to the class list, and you have your options registered, Shinji... Ikari..." her voice trailed away.

"What?"

"Nothing," Hikary said tersely. "I expect you'll have to introduce yourself to the rest of the class during the tutor group time. After that, you'll need to pick a Social Work Task," she looked at him with a hint of pity, "and considering we're already into the term, your options will be more limited than they would have been at the start of the year."

Shinji coughed. This was one of the cover stories. "Actually, I already have one; I have a work placement down in the Geocity. Environmental preservation work." He was sure that someone had found that far, far too funny when picking that official title for the Test Pilot programme.

And, in truth, though Shinji did not know it, Deputy Representative Fuyutsuki had in fact been highly amused.

Hikary nodded. "Oh, that's good. Arcology biosphere management is a vital role that people too often overlook. Although I expect you're not looking forwards to the commute."

"I would rather not have to do it," he admitted.

The girl shrugged. "It is mandatory, and I feel it's good that it encourages a sense of social responsibility. But, yes, you already have a placement, and so you don't need to worry about this." She sucked in a breath. "And that means that you might need to put up with a bit of pestering from Dathan."

"Who? Why?"

She glanced over at a brown-haired boy, sitting at the back of the classroom, idly nodding his head to some unknown music. "He's heavily involved in the OIS Cadets, and they always have more room for Social Work Tasks. He's... enthusiastic."

"Enthusiastic," said Shinji, flatly. If the Class Representative warned him about that, then how bad must it be?

Hikary nodded. "Enthusiastic," she said tactfully. "Of course, if you're still interested, you could join the Cadets anyway, but there will be other clubs trying to get you to join, so," she flashed a brief smile at him, and Shinji couldn't help but notice that it was a pretty smile, the teeth human-like, rather than the chisel-like Nazzadi dentures, "I would advise you not commit to anything too soon, until you've seen all the options. Unless there's something you really want, like if you play any sports or an instrument?" she asked, the pitch of her voice rising at the end.

"Uh, yes, cello, actually, but mine hasn't been transported over yet," he said, smiling back. "And I'll keep that in mind, thanks. Um... is there any class seating order here?"

The orange-eyed _amlaty_ shook her head, pigtails flicking behind her. "No. Some teachers have their own plans, but this is the tutor group, so you are free to sit where you like."

"Thank you," said Shinji, even as he paled slightly. "I think I probably need to start reading this," he patted the folder, "and... well, nerves. That is, it might be a good idea to sit down."

"I understand," she said, nodding, as she returned to her seat, returning to the conversation he had interrupted. "Remember to speak to the tutor as soon as he arrives." Sitting down, Shinji could hear the babble of vaguely interested chat of teenagers spread out from that focal point, including several repetitions of his name. One of which was heavily mispronounced, and another which was just plain wrong.

_Sigh._

"Stand up when a teacher enters the classroom," he heard the surprisingly commanding voice of Hikary say, and there was a general scraping of chairs as the class stood for the elderly male teacher.

"Sit down, sit down," the elderly man said, flapping a hand at the class, as he pulled out his chair and sat down himself, with a slight sigh. There was the snap of a pair of arglasses unfolding, as the man put his on, and turned on his desk. "I hope everyone had a nice weekend."

There was an apathetic muttering chorus to the effect of 'yeah' and 'why did it have to end' from the teenagers.

"Now... let me see," he continued, scanning his way down the desk, the touchscreen that was the surface yielding to his gestures. "Ah... yes." He looked up, tired-looking eyes scanning the classroom. Shinji winced slightly, as they settled on him. "You're the new one, aren't you?" the teacher asked. At Shinji's nod, he said, "Please come here, then. You have the folder... yes, you do. I need to see that."

With a slightly fixed smile, Shinji got up. He could feel the eyes down his spine, he was sure of it; the hair on the back of his neck was standing up.

_Come on, Shinji_, he told himself. _You routinely drown, as part of piloting an arcanoxeno... biocyber... uh, magic cyborg alien robot. You musn't run away from having to do the whole 'introducing yourself to a class' thing. That would just be silly._

He still wanted to.

* * *

"Hey, you!" demanded a voice from behind him in the corridor, on the way to the history classroom.

_Great way to start a conversation_, Shinji thought. Turning around, he could see the brown haired boy that the class representative... Hikary... had noted to him, already holding a form in hand. _Yes, as I thought. A wonderful way to persuade someone that they want to spend more time with you. 'Hey, you!' Perhaps you would like to be a little more abusive. Maybe some profanity. Perhaps you should try punching me, and then I'd _really _want to hang around with you._ He paused. _I hope he doesn't punch me,_ Shinji added hastily to himself.

And from the way that the Nazzadi girl standing slightly behind the other boy had one hand clutched to her forehead, and seemed to be groaning slightly, it seemed that someone else, at least, seemed to agree that that was probably not the best way to go about persuading people.

"Yes?" Shinji said.

"You're the transfer student, aren't you?" The boy loomed over Shinji; he looked like another one of those tall Europeans, perhaps descended from evacuees from Migou-occupied Scandinavia. "Why did you move, anyway; it's unusual to move so close to the start of term."

"Dathan..." hissed the girl beside him. "You're being..."

"I'm Shinji, by the way," he said, a slightly caustic note entering his voice. "And," he shrugged, pulling out the cover story, "the move was to do with my father and his work." Inwardly, he frowned. Whoever had put these cover stories together seemed to take pride in setting them up so he had to lie as little as possible, while mislead as much as possible. "Now, what do you want?"

The hint of confrontation failed to dissuade the other boy. "Since you're new, you're going to have to get something to do on Wednesday afternoons. I want you to join the OIS Cadets."

There was another groan from the girl.

"Uh," Shinji put on a smile, "well, I would like to, but I'm afraid I already have something booked." _Jerk._

"Hikary got you into old people visiting that quickly, huh?" the boy said, a petulant look on his face. "It's like she's trying to undermine the Cadets, with the way she pushes people away from us..."

"Dathan, don't get started on..."

Shinji said nothing, and tried to indicate that he was otherwise occupied with trying to get to the next class.

"... but, you know, you can still change. It's a lot more fun with the Cadets. I mean, there are puzzles all over the world, and this way, you can hunt them down, and _solve_ them," Dathan said, balling one fist and slamming it into the other palm. Shinji recoiled slightly. "Permanently," he added, unnecessarily.

"I'm fine, really," said Shinji. "I might consider it," _and I have, and I've rejected it_ he added mentally, "but now isn't the time."

The other boy shrugged. "Suit yourself, Transferee." He looked rather sullen as he walked off.

"Sorry about that," said the girl, softly. "He's like that. All the time." She had a hint of an accent he couldn't recognise; it wasn't a pure Nazzadi accent, but was instead blended with something else. "I'm surprised Hikary didn't warn you about him."

Shinji sighed. "She did. And I've met people like him before," he admitted. "They seem to think that 'tact' is... um... a percentage of your income you have to pay to the government."

"I've heard worse descriptions of him," the girl said, with a flick of her ponytail, "in the far-too-many years I've had him in my class. I'm Jony, by the way."

"Shinji," he said, looking down at her. "Um... nice to meet you. So... why do you hang around with him, then?"

She shrugged. "I'm used to it. He's not my boyfriend, by the way," she added hastily. "I just want to get this clear up front."

Shinji raised an eyebrow. _I... I didn't ask._ There was the characteristic slight darkening that was the closest that the black-skinned (and voumelanin was actually black, unlike human eumelanin) Nazzadi came to blushing.

She winced slightly the expression on his face. "Uh... and I wasn't asking you out, either." Jony coughed. "Can we pretend this part of the conversation never happened?" she asked uncomfortably.

Shinji nodded, blushing too. "I think... yeah." He coughed. "So. Um."

"Um. Yes, the OIS Cadets aren't actually that bad," she continued weakly, "and as an official, state-sponsored club, we do have a clubroom and stuff. I know you said that you were doing something else, but," she smiled weakly at him, "you might want to consider just taking a look."

"I'll think about it," Shinji said. He felt his PCPU vibrate; checking it, it was his muse (newly updated with his timetable), nagging him that he was going to be late, even though he had her on 'silent mode'. A similar gesture on behalf of the girl, at exactly the same moment, revealed that it seemed to be a standard part of the software update from the school's Internal Grid.

"Where is H107?" asked Shinji.

"This way. It's Mr Rokpol droning on about Modern History," Jony said, as they hurried through the thinning crowd of students. "1931, discovery of Elder Thing city. 1937, discovery of Yithian city. 1939, start of World War 2. 1946, end of World War Two, Berlin and Hiroshima blown up, Axis powers surrender, reformation of League of Nations into United Nations."

"Wait, you've already covered all that?" groaned Shinji. "Why did I miss all that school?"

They both got glared at by Hikary as they arrived at H107, despite the fact that the teacher wasn't there yet.

* * *

Shinji was heavily laden with books and work given to him by various teachers by the time he got home.

Well, metaphorically, he was. In actual fact, they were all in electronic format, loaded up to his personal filespace, and so did not, in fact, weigh anything. But the metaphysical weight of yet more work, on top of his training, was crushing.

As he arrived back at the apartment, he could hear loud noises coming from the longue. Putting his bag down with a sigh, he poked his head through.

Misato was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, clad in a strappy yellow top and very short shorts, a bowl and a spoon in hand. Her meal, however, was rather interrupted by the frequent bursts of laughter and unfeminine snorting emanating forth from her. She was watching something on the large screen, which, from what he could see, seemed to be some kind of cartoon.

"What are you doing?" Shinji asked her, his brow wrinkling in a frown.

"Oh, heya Shinji," she said, turning and cheerfully waving with the hand with a spoon in it. "Have fun?"

He narrowed his eyes. "Yes. I'm a big fan of work," he replied, in a studiously neutral tone. "I'm really looking forwards to catching up on a month of schoolwork at the start of my ISCHATs."

Misato appeared to be impregnable to sarcasm, or at least chose to ignore it. "That's good," she said, hitting the pause button for the programme. "Tests and school are important, Shinji," she lectured him, "and that kind of attitude will serve you well."

_Right. I'm just going to assume that was deliberate, because I don't want to believe that she took that seriously._

"Meet anyone?" she added.

"Yes." Misato looked at him expectantly. "Are you feeling better?" he asked, changing the subject. "This morning, you seemed..." he paused, "... very, very tired," he finished. If she missed the sarcasm, she probably wasn't going to be observant enough to get similes or metaphor.

"Yeah. You'd be amazed what getting to sleep does for being tired. And," she said, through a mouthful of... whatever it was, it smelt, Shinji sniffed, like _beer_, but he could see noodles swimming in it, "getting to do nothing apart from a nagging call from Rits checking that you'd left was nice." She shook her head. "I have no idea why she did that, actually. I mean, she was there when I finally got to leave. She knew that I would only just be getting... I guess, it was meant to remind me to wake you up, if you'd somehow slept in, as if you could... and that reminds me, can you tell your muse to keep it down. I meant to mention it earlier, but it's loud when it turns on the radio and stuff."

Shinji frowned. "I'll lower her volume, yes," he said. "I guess it must have been annoying for you, to have been there when the morning people came in," he added with a shrug.

Misato shook her head. "Nope. Rits was there all night. I swear, I think she probably gets less than 20 hours of sleep a week. That's the problem with being a genius, Shinji. It's much more fun being a normal, and getting to have a life outside of science. Don't put too much of your life into school and tests. It's better for your health."

_Wait a moment. You just said that schools and tests are important!_ Shinji thought, his inner voice a blend of irritation and exasperation. _Less than a minute ago! Consistency isn't your strong point, is it?_

"So, what are you watching?" he called through, as he dodged a giant albino emperor penguin, which had apparently got its own drink, to get to the fridge.

"'Instructional Lessons For the Youth of Today and Stuff'," Misato called back, as the noise resumed. "Haven't you seen it before?"

"Wark!"

"Oh, yeah, can you bring the bottle opener through, Shinji?" Misato added, apparently at Pen-Pen's request.

_Bottle opener, bottle opener_ the boy's thoughts ran, in the ancient mantra used and developed independently by almost every culture in human history. "Misato! It's meant to be in the drawer with the red handle," he said, after checking the place. "And it's not."

"Oh." She paused. "Check the other drawers," she commanded.

"_This is Hemiechinus auritus, the Long-Eared Hedgehog,_" came the voice of the resumed programme. "_It is a species of hedgehog native to Central Asia and the Caucasus Mountains, although the eastern end of its habitat has been negatively affected by the expansion of Leng. It is primarily an insectivore, and is smaller and faster than its European cousin._"

"I'm checking the drawers," Shinji responded, "and it's not there!"

"It might be in the fridge."

"Why would it be in the fridge?"

"_Look at him. What a happy little fellow. He may be covered in spines, but look at that twitchy little nose, and those floppy ears, and you can see that he's cheerful to be alive._"

"... because maybe I might want to open a bottle as soon as I get it," said Misato, eventually.

Shinji stopped, and his palm collided with his forehead. "So you leave the bottle opener in the fridge?"

"Yes. And?"

"No, it's fine. I'll find it, and bring it through. Don't worry. And then I can put it back in its proper place, too."

"_He is also, sadly, a randy little bugger. A lonely, randy little bugger who'll fuck pretty much anything with spines on it, whether male, female, dead or alive._"

Shinji's jaw dropped open, and he gazed, unseeing, into the fridge, as Misato snorted. _What is she watching? What... what... huh._ He blinked as his brain rebooted, only to hit another fatal error, and shut down again.

"_In this, he shows a profound lack of intellect. Look. He's found another hedgehog. And it's even alive and female. He might be in for some luck. Watch as he tries to sneak up on her. She's a cheap slut, too. The characteristic high heels and fishnets of an illegal and unlicensed prostitute._"

Shinji's face was getting cold, as he stared, empty eyed into the fridge. _What. The. Hell._

"Oh, wait, no. I was sitting on it. It's okay."

"Wark. Wark!"

"Sure thing." There was the snap of a breaking seal.

_Why is the world not making sense anymore?_

The sound of tearing flesh and a rhythmic squirting noise boomed through the apartment, accompanied by Misato's hysterical laughter.

"_Oh dear. The hedgehog just skewered himself. Even now, he is bleeding to death. He was not able to get too close to the other hedgehog without hurting himself. If he had stayed at the right distance, he would have been fine, but he got too close, and when two hedgehogs get too close, one of them always gets hurt._"

Standing in the doorway, the boy gazed at the screen, where the blood-covered, anthropomorphic hedgehog in high-heels was running around screaming, the other, dead male hedgehog in a trenchcoat impaled on its back, then over to the laughing woman, and penguin with a bottle of beer in its hand... wing... _manipulator_, then back at the screen."

"_The moral of this story, children, is this. "The Hedgehog cannot be buggered at all._"

Shinji worked his jaw, a few times, but no works came out. Finally, he managed a "What?"

Misato turned, a grin spread over her face. "It's 'Instructional Lessons For the Youth of Today and Stuff'," she said, as if it explained everything.

"... what?"

She rolled her eyes at him. "It's not serious. It makes fun of stuff like teaching programmes."

"...what?" The female hedgehog was now on fire.

"Oh, lighten up." She gazed at his shocked face. "Are you seriously telling me you've never seen it before?" she asked. "You're a teenage boy, aren't you? Aren't you meant to be all about the pointless rebellion against good taste, and the damaging of previous generation's moral values and stuff?"

"How is that funny?"

Misato sighed, pouting at him. "You're boring."

_And you're sitting in shorts, and a skimpy top with blatantly no bra... yes, I can tell, it isn't hard... eating cheap noodles which you seem to have cooked in beer. I think it's rather clear that you're immature._

_Anyway, I thought I threw out all those cheap noodles. Seriously, they're starchy junk. They taste horrible. Did you seriously go and make more while I was at school, and not use the good quality ones I made? Do you actually like them? Why? What possible reason could you have for willingly eating them?_

"Maybe," he said, blushing. "I'm going to start my school work. Try to keep the noise down."

Misato watched him go. _Ooops,_ she thought.

Seriously, what was up with him? This was her day off, and she was still tired, but was keeping herself awake after the nap in the morning, to try to get her sleep cycle back to normal, and then, as soon as he came in, he was already complaining about something petty like where the bottle opener was. It wasn't even as if he was the one who used it ever; the only bottles in the house were the ones she bought, and so if she was the only user, she could leave the opener wherever she felt like. And then he acted all stiff and formal about something that was funny, and blatantly not meant seriously. To be honest, he needed a surgically implanted sense of humour. Although, thinking about it, that might not be enough. That particular trait might be _genetic_.

She yawned, and stretched, glancing down at Pen-Pen, who was sprawled, belly-first, on the carpet. What should she watch next? She had the entire series, so she wouldn't have to pay-select... hmm, yeah. With a few words to her muse, Misato selected 'Episode 29: Sexually Adventurous Bees', and settled back, taking another mouthful of the beer-boiled noodles.

If only people would be a bit more understanding.

* * *

**16th September, 2091**

Shinji had his arms sprawled forwards on the desk, head rested on them. The music playing through his headphones was the only thing keeping him awake. He had been up late, trying to catch up on his work, and hadn't had time for breakfast; the only reason he hadn't been late was that Misato had started flicking water at him to get him out of bed. He'd even managed to sleep through his muse's alarms.

Of course, the only reason he had been up so late was because he had been in the Geocity from two until eight. Other people got a nice easy four hours of reading to primary school children, or visiting old people with no living relatives. Shinji longed for that kind of easy life. He had to train in a giant robot covered in guns, with the ability to crush buildings underfoot and drop-kick any hostile Migou unit smaller than a capital ship.

It was nowhere as cool as it sounded.

_Ah, I can doze off, right? I know technically I should be socialising, but I can't do that when I'm like this, and more sleep is better._

"Are you all right?" someone asked from behind him. The voice was familiar, but he couldn't link it to a name, and didn't want to move to look who it was.

"Just tired," he muttered. "Not ill. Trying to catch up on work. Failing. Want more sleep."

Whoever they were patted him on the shoulder. "Good luck."

Good, they weren't talking to him anymore. He just wanted to rest his eyes.

Somewhere towards the rear of a classroom, a brown-haired boy, active arglasses opaque, was doing... something. It was impossible to see what he was actually manipulating unless one was actually tuned into the same viewing frequency. Whatever was being done, though, was inducing certain vocalisations. Like "rat-tat-tat-tat", and "whoosh... boom!".

He felt a solid hand grip one wrist, and froze, tilting his head down to peek over the top of his spectacles. With his free hand, he scrabbled down on the desk, until he managed to deactivate the link, and let the glasses turn transparent once more.

"What is it, Class Rep?" he asked, blinking as he was forced to deal with the real world, rather than the models floating in the air before his eyes.

Hikary was looking at him with more than a little disapproval, the hand not restraining his wrist resting on her hip. "Firstly," she began, "stop making those noises. They are annoying people, and you really should be using the tutor group time to socialise with your friends, not playing around with AR models." The boy shrugged, which prompted a sigh from the _amlaty_. "Secondly, Kensuke, have you heard anything from Toja?" she asked, letting go of his wrist.

Kensuke massaged his newly freed arm (_She has a grip like steel!_, he thought), and shook his head. "He buzzed me over the weekend, said he was going into hospital for his sister's operation. Haven't heard anything else yet. Even his muse is bouncing all messages," he boy fished around in his pocket, "... uh, wait a moment."

Hikary shook her head. "No, I know about that. You're on good terms with him, aren't you?" She crossed her arms in front of her. "Are you telling me that you haven' heard from him at all?" the girl asked, a note of disbelief entering her voice. "I mean, I know his sister was hurt in the incursion, but... nothing since the weekend?"

"Nope. Not at all. It's been almost a month, too; she must have been really bad if she's still in a critical state." He paused. "You don't think something has happened to him, do you?"

"I hope not." There was worry in her orange eyes. "I mean, I haven't been forwarded anything about..."

Behind her, there was a laconic, "Yo," as a tall, athletic Nazzadi boy entered the room, one hand raised in a desultory greeting. Compared to the stark black overcoats which were part of the regulation uniform, his coat was scrunched up underneath one arm, with a sports jacket taking its place.

"Hey, Toja," called out Kensuke, as Hikary's mouth twisted into a silent "Oh".

He glanced around the mostly full room, before dumping his bag and overcoat down on a free table with a solid clunk. "Nice to see everyone seems to love turning up early as usual," he said, the noticeable accent in his voice only accentuating the slight hint of contempt.

"Yeah, well," Kensuke said back, with a shrug. "What do you expect here?"

Hikary stared at the brown-haired boy for a moment, before switching her attention to the new arrival. "Where have you been?" she asked, her tone formal, even annoyed. "Your muse was even bouncing all messages back, so you have quite a bit of work to catch up on... and you still aren't wearing the proper uniform!"

Toja groaned, "Give me a break, Class Rep. I've been in the hospital since Sunday. There were complications in my sister's operation."

The girl's face immediately flushed, embarrassment covering her face. "I'm so sorry," she said, hastily. "Is... is... she's going to get better, right?"

With a grunt, Toja slumped down onto a desk. "Yeah, she's... she's stable," he said. "She woke up yesterday, and seems to be," he tapped his head, "fine up here. Now she just has to learn to walk again, and stuff."

"What happened? I mean, I know you live up in Victoria, but..."

"Nah," the boy shook his head, "We're deeper inside." He gave a disgusted snort. "We'd have been fine had we just stayed at home, rather than evacuated."

"Huh?" Kensuke looked confused. "But the legal minimum for construction materials for an evacuation bunker is twice that of an arcology superstructure..."

"Yeah, and it doesn't help one bit when some _harangi_ thing goes underground and manages to crush everything, does it!" snapped Toja, eyes flashing. "I'm really pissed off!"

"Calm down," the girl said, leaning back from the sudden anger. "Please."

The Nazzadi boy took in a breath, and let it out, slowly, teeth gritted. "When the bunker... it just crumpled, you know... when it gave way, I saw the roof bend. And I grabbed her and tried to pull her out the way." He swallowed. "Just managed to pull her into the way. She'd have been fine if I'd just left her there. But, no, I interfered, and because of me, she got her spine crushed!"

The other two, and the class around them, were silent. "It... it's not really your fault," Kensuke said softly, hand hovering ineffectually. "I mean, if you'd been wrong, you'd be blaming yourself for not doing it."

Toja groaned, "People have been saying that. It doesn't make it better." With a sigh, he shook his head. "It'll be better when she's up and about again."

Kensuke nodded intently. "Yes. And at least they killed the ENE. Believe me, the forums are going crazy about it. It was awesome, the way that a squadron of Engels managed to get in close, and take it down. Those pilots," there was awe in his voice, "they were real heroes."

There was a short, bitter laugh from his friend. He glowered when the other two, and several other classmates stared at him. "I'm still annoyed," he said, tone abrupt. "Don't listen." Toja forced a breath of air out in a huff. "So~ooo," he said, elongating the syllable, and obviously trying to change the subject, "what did I miss?"

Hikary tilted her head. "You have all the notes sent to you," she said immediately, "and if you'd stop telling your muse to bounce all mail, then they would get through."

The Nazzadi boy groaned. "I don't guess you'd get them to let me off, thanks to family stress and stuff?" he asked, a note of hope in his voice.

"Of course they won't. This is an Ashcroft Academy, and you're expected to live up to the school's reputation," she replied.

Kensuke smirked, and gestured to the front of the classroom. "You think you have it bad, just think about what the new transfer student has to put up with," he said. "Apparently, he's missed everything from the start of term, thanks to a move, and then an illness. He's got a month of stuff to do... you've got, what, four days?"

"Oh, we have a new person in the class?" Toja only sounded vaguely interested.

"Yes, but have you heard the rumours?" interjected a girl, her hair in tight braids, leaning in to the conversation. She was almost dark-skinned enough to pass for a Nazzadi, although her surprisingly-green eyes put lie to that. "We think he's..."

Hikary glanced at her with narrowed eyes. "If you don't mind, Enu..." she began, but was ignored.

"As I was saying, I've heard that he's the son of the European Representative. After all, his surname is 'Ikari'. And I did some browsing... it could be him. Pictures could match, although I couldn't find any good quality ones."

The _amlaty_ sighed. "It's not like 'Ikari' is an especially rare surname in Japan, Enu" she said, a weary note in her voice. "You shouldn't jump to that kind of conclusion."

"So you don't think he's related?" added a Nazzadi girl, the one with the dyed red streaks in her hair, to the rapidly growing conversation.

With narrowed eyes, Hikary said, "No, Taly. I just think that we shouldn't make a fuss about it if he doesn't choose to. It isn't as if it matters."

The Nazzadi girl flashed a sudden grin, chisel-like teeth evident. "Sure thing. _Hokari_," she said, with a mocking tone in her voice.

"We could settle this, of course," said Enu, with a glance to the front of the classroom, where the figure of Shinji Ikari was sprawled out, head resting on arms, obviously asleep. "We could just go poke him, and ask him while he's still confused.

"No."

"Oh, come on, it's a real thing. That's why important people have bodyguards who stop them being questioned when coming out of operations, while they're confused." The girl grinned. "I read it on exocerebrum."

Taly sneered. "It's important. For one, the Ashcroft Council of Representatives still has a disgraceful lack of Nazzadi members. Four Nazzadi, to seven _anfrazzadi_, and we're pushed into Regional posts, too, rather than Conceptual ones."

"If that is the case," Hikary said, eyes narrowed at the other girl, "then men have more reason for complaint than the Nazzadi do. They make up more of the population, and have fewer seats. But, no, it does not matter. And it's not nice to discuss classmates behind their back. So everyone should go sit back down; it's almost the end of tutor group, and I'll have to take the register, if the teacher isn't going to show up."

* * *

It began with the scream of sirens, and the babble of Limited Artificial Intelligences, as the lights brightened and Emergency Mode activated.

"Alert," stated a clear, androgynous voice over the top. "Pattern Blue detected. First perimeter breach..." before it cut itself off.  
"Second perimeter br...  
"Third perimet..."  
"Fourth perim...  
"Fifth..."  
"Si..."  
"S..."

"Oh," muttered Lieutenant Aoba, as the warnings blanketed out his screen, taking over from the report he was writing up. The above-ground security cordons, a massively multilayered defence system which covered, at the widest, most of the south of what had been the United Kingdom, were simply being ignored. He blinked, twice, as he absorbed the information. "Oh."

"Get me Major Katsuragi right now!" screamed the duty officer, her heart-shaped face pale. "Get a line to EuroHighCom ready!" She took a deep, shuddering breath. "_Audhu billahi minashaitanir rajeem,_" she muttered to herself, the words calming her slightly, before continuing. "Do we have a location for the..."

The voice of Major Katsuragi came from behind her, "Status report, now! What's happening, Captain Bakr?" and the duty officer relaxed slightly.

"Massive anomalous Pattern Blue, Major," she responded promptly. "It's... it's..." she turned to face the on-duty Operator, "... what's the current status?"

"The Pattern Blue has passed all the above-ground defensive perimeters," Second Lieutenant Estat said, eyes gazing unseeing into nothing, as the optical jacks in his Eyes streamed data from the cable connected to the back of his head. "And then it continued straight through, and turned... it's coming back, but slower. It's still moving at Mach 12. We don't have any reports of contact, Captain... and Major."

The Major turned chalk white. "Is it genuine?" she whispered. "No, don't answer that. She slammed her fist into her palm. "Right, contact EuroHighCom, and request permission to deploy Evangelions. Ready Unit 01 for an emergency deployment." She took a breath. "And tell security to execute Protocol Echo. We don't have time for any other way."

Major Misato Katsuragi was not a happy woman. Just tracking the pattern of burned out sensors (she made a note that they needed less sensitive ones installed, just so they could keep actively tracking such beings), this thing was moving far too fast. It had just punched right through the defensive perimeters, overshot, and was coming back. Even Asherah hadn't been this fast. And it was moving too quickly for the NEG to get a workable firing solution for any tactical nuclear weapons. Hells, it was moving too quickly for most air defences to get a proper lock. Only specialist Migou craft ever reached these velocities in atmosphere, and those things were basically engine. Even laser defences would have problems mechanically tracking it fast enough... not that they knew what it looked like. It wasn't leaving a shockwave, it hadn't been seen, in its turns it showed no sign of observing conservation of momentum. Harbinger-3 had acted at least partially like a real thing, but this... she would have suspected that it was a false signal, but false signals didn't burn out sensors, did they? And, anyway, they had to treat all signals as if they were real, because this was one area where failure was not an option.

_What the hell was this thing?_

And that wasn't her only problem. Unit 00 was still not operational; Test Pilot Ayanami may have been able to move again, but she was still in no state to pilot. That left one, undertrained, underprepared Child... no, _child_ as the sole military forces at her disposal. She was going to have to work with what she had, she thought, as she heard Ritsuko pant, apparently having run all the way from her office. She was really going to have to see if NEGA Command would let her move Unit 02 off the Eastern Front, but... no, there wasn't time to ponder such could-have-beens now.

* * *

The light streaming in through the windows, from the illumination panels on the roof of the arcology dome cast long shadows in the classroom. This was rather unhelphful, as Shinji was trying to simultaneously listen to the teacher, and, on a larger, borrowed A4-sized PCPU, cram-study the things the course had covered before now.

As it was, the aforementioned things were making insufficient sense without context. And he should probably think about getting one like this; the pocket-sized softscreen he had didn't have a large enough screen, if one wasn't wearing arglasses.

"Now, as can be clearly seen, numbers like this come in two parts; the real part, that is, the normal part, which you have been used to up until now, and the imaginary part. If the component is multiplied by a factor of _i_, it is imaginary; otherwise, it is real." The teacher smiled, tucking back a lock of his dark brown hair behind his green-tinted arglasses. He had to be one of the eldest _amlati_, Shinji thought; although there were conceptions before the end of the First Arcanotech War, they were rare, and almost never consensual. "And, well, they may be called 'complex', but they're not actually that hard."

There was a dutiful chuckle, and a rebellious groan, from the class.

"The first thing you have to do is separate the terms with an _i_ from the ones which don't have one. And, at this point, I should probably point out that all the numbers you're likely to ever meet, unless you chose to specialise in high-end mathematics, or become a sorcerer, can be broken up in that way. Tsuka, how do you identify whether you are taking the real or imaginary part of (3 + 5i)?"

The black-skinned boy glanced from side to side nervously. "Um..." he said, biting on his bottom lip.

The teacher sighed. "Okay... hmm, Taly?"

The Nazzadi girl with dyed red streaks in her hair stood up. "The imaginary component is denoted with Im[3+5i], the real component with Re[3+5i]," she said, before sitting back down.

"Correct." The teacher ran his fingers along his desk, glancing down at the touchscreen which was its surface. "Now, take... well, take _i_, the square root of minus one. Despite the fact that it is purely an imaginary number, it can still be written in complex form, as (0 + i). Now, how would you separate out the components... Ullr?"

The chosen boy blinked, orange eyes flickering. "You specify whether you want the real or imaginary component, followed by square brackets," he said softly. "The real component of _i_ is zero; the imaginary component of _i_ is one."

The teacher nodded. "Note how Mikael didn't slip up the classic mistake, _as normal_," he added, _sotto voce_. "Im[i] is 1, not _i_. We're looking for the coefficient of the _i_ term. That means that the imaginary component does not actually have a..."

He was interrupted by a squad in full combat gear, Ashcroft Foundation insignia clearly evident, bursting through the door to the classroom. In deference to the fact that they were in a school, their weapons were lowered. Nevertheless, they were carrying them in a position which suggested that they could be unlowered should it prove necessary.

"Go! Secure the Third Child!" ordered the mechanical voice of the lead figure. Two more soldiers, combat masks fully opaque scanned the classroom, and advanced on Shinji, who, much like the rest of the class would have been in shock, had he actually had time to respond.

"Protocol Echo, sir," said one of the two figures.

"Why, what..."

"This way," said the figure tersely, as they pulled him upright.

Shinji groaned. "I'm needed in the Eva?" he asked, as they escorted him through the ranks of chairs, crushing bags underfoot.

"Come this way, sir. Don't talk." The boy was hustled out of the room, all but being carried by the armoured figures.

There was an uncomfortable pause, as the squad leader stared at the maths teacher, who had dropped the tablet in his hand, and was staring back, jaw handing open. Forty-eight teenaged eyes were locked on the grey-and-blue figure.

With a creek, the door fell off its hinges, echoing in the silence.

"Carry on," said the lead figure, in the mechanical voice which, despite the fact it was designed not to convey emotion, still managed to sound embarrassed.

The teacher's jaw flapped a few times, a noise almost exactly not like escaping steam coming out. The soldier saluted, turned around, and left.

The silence was broken by a brown-haired, bespectacled boy punching one arm in the air. "That was totally sweet!" Kensuke yelled. "That was Eschaton XI-F semi-powered heavy combat armour. It's meant to be able to shrug off 10mm rifle fire!"

"Everyone, silence!" snapped Hikary, turning to glare at the boy. It didn't have the proper effect.

"And those rifles. They... no, they couldn't have been..."

"Silence!"

"... specialist squad support 16mm anti-material integrated coilguns with underslung..."

"Be. Quiet." The girl turned to face the teacher. "Sir, have we received warning? Do we need to evacuate?"

The teacher's brain had, by now, rebooted. Well, mostly. He still looked rather shell-shocked. "What the hell is going on?" he managed. "Was that... was that real?" He glanced at Hikary. "What?"

"Have we had an evacuation notice, sir?" she repeated.

"I think it was real," a boy behind her said. "After all, _i_ wasn't involved." He was promptly elbowed in the ribs by the Nazzadi boy next to him. "Ow. That hurt, Kaga."

"You deserved it. Idiot." They were both silenced by a glare from Hikary.

"Sir?"

"Uh... uh... uh. Uh, no. No evacuation notice." The teacher swallowed. "I... I think we can probably call it a day here," he said, glancing at the crushed bags, and the door lying flat on the floor. "It... well, for one, the classroom is rather damaged." There was a nervous titter. "I... I think I probably have to go to talk to some people. Quite urgently." And with that said, he almost-ran out of the classroom, PCPU already in hand.

And as the class dispersed, the babble was already turning to the question of the new boy, and what had just happened, which had only deepened the questions that already existed about him. It seemed that mathematics was nothing compared to how complex the real world had just become.

* * *

The oddly heat-neutral feeling of LCL flooded Shinji's lungs, and he gagged. Unfortunately, it tasted no better. He shook his head, and tried not to vomit.

"Shinji, our analysts are building up a pattern for the sweeps," said Ritsuko, eyes wrinkled with concern. The boy stared at her. Those blue, cog-like lights from the active harcontacts were almost hypnotic. Human eyes should not look like that, there was something inside him screaming, and yet they did frequently. "We're going to launch you into the path of it."

_Wait, what?_

"Remember your training," the Major said. "We're sending the Babylon up with you; be aware, the primary magazine is loaded with vECF shells. Keep it loaded from the secondary, until we have a positive contact."

Shinji reflexively swallowed, wished that he hadn't, and then nodded. "Yes, I understand."

"We are unlocking full combat mode for the LITAN; don't worry, it will aid with target acquisition, and handle firing for the lasers, missiles and charge beam." Ritsuko ran her hands through her hair. "Brace for launch. Initialise final stage preparations," she paused, "Maya, I'm passing launch authorisation to the Magi. Fire when optimal."

An image of the brown-haired Operator appeared in her left eye. "Understood, Dr Akagi," Lieutenant Ibuki said, from her position down in the full-immersion chamber, floating in a tank of transparent fluid. "Sosily has a valid solution... t-minus eleven, ten, nine..." As she counted down, numbers on the main screen gave it to all. From the way she could see the boy stiffen, gloved fists tightening around the control sticks, he knew it was coming too.

And then the Evangelion went shooting up, with an acceleration which would have been crushing, had it not been for the design of the plug, and the LCL that filled it.

"We have a launch, sir," she heard Misato say from behind her. "Acedia is deployed in Zero-One," referring to the 'official' reference to the Third Child; the internal Ashcroft name was somewhat problematic due to the (accurate) links to the idea of child soldiers. "Is there any more data on the target?" She was almost begging.

Field Marshal Jameson's voice was harsh with stress. "None whatsoever. You're getting everything we have, and all of that's coming from the Shaws. Radar... nothing. IR... nothing. Visual... nothing. All we can tell is that it's less than 0.4 klicks up." He gave a bitter laugh. "Asherah was 'just'," and the sarcasm was palpable, "an unstoppable killing machine that could take an arcology-fired nuclear weapon to the face. But we can't _even_ see this thing."

Those were the unspoken words between the two of them. Against Harbinger-3, the entity had diverted its attack to target Unit 01. Perhaps a launch would force the thing, whatever it was, to appear and attack the Evangelion.

Shinji's head spun, as the deceleration kicked in, and the force required to counter the momentum of a forty metre arcanocyberxenobiological warmachine made the magnetic rails glow red hot, illuminating the vented coolant. Objectively, it looked pretty awesome, as the titan emerged from the hole in the ground, wrapped in clouds of freezing gas, in a pleasingly Mephistophelesian manner.

Of course, any performance of Faust where Unit 01 had appeared from the stage trapdoor would have probably led to the entire replacement of the theatre, unless it had been built to a scale quite above the normal.

Falling immediately to one knee, newly trained instincts already kicking in, Shinji snatched up the grossly oversized rifle, and broke into a run, feet punching holes in the streets which connected the buildings between the pyramidal arcology structures. In the early autumn , late afternoon shadows casting a thick contrast with the bands of striped sunlight, he scanned the area, Babylon raised and ready.

The Babylon rifle was, by any reasonable standard, a grossly overpowered weapon. Fundamentally, it was built around the main weapon of the Type-S025 artillery piece, a 155mm coilgun. It bore about the same resemblance to that weapon as a tiger did to a small rodent-like mammal of the type that a dinosaur would stand on. It was, to be frank, an overengineered solution to one of the major problems which the Evangelions had. Specifically, despite the fact that they were a capital-grade unit, they were far too small to use even a frigate-grade D-Engine. As a result, they were powered by ten Engine/Refrigerator combinations, of a type which a Behemoth-class Engel (the next largest ACXB mecha) would use one of. Such a system took up non-negligible amounts of space in the Unit, pushed the localised Yi-Ricci spacetime tensor around the Engines to dangerous levels, and still was vastly inferior to the economies of scale which a true, frigate-scaled D-Engine would grant.

The fact that, as height doubled, volume (and thus mass) increased eightfold, was a bitch.

As a result, for their size, the default integrated armaments of an Evagelion were underpowered. The bipedal form was not conducive to the most powerful weapons anyway (as recoil was a tragic fact of life), and there was a limit to what missiles, in an era of laser point-defence systems, could do.

And, sometimes, one just had to hit a target very, very hard. Preferably with something which blew up.

The Babylon was thus an over-engineered, hypervelocity coilgun artillery piece converted into an assault gun, given an extended barrel, and enough coolant systems to allow it to achieve a reasonable rate of fire without melting into a pretty pool of glowing metal, and loaded with the same vECF shells used by NEG ships to target landed Migou Drone Ships from over the horizon. It had its own D-Engine, larger than the ones used by all but the largest mecha in the New Earth Government arsenal. Each round took a trained sorcerer four hours to ward after they were manufactured, just to enable it to survive the acceleration without damaging the delicate internal mechanisms needed to make it detonate with the force of 12.52 metric tonnes of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene. It could fire one shells every 0.8 seconds, and carried an internal magazine preloaded with 24 of these monstrosities, as well as an identical, secondary magazine loaded with conventional anti-armour rounds.

It was still suboptimal, compared to the armaments of a true capital ship.

"What am I looking for?" he asked nervously, as he span, trying to keep moving.

"Target not acquired," stated the LITAN.

"I wasn't talking to... Misato!"

The Major appeared on his viewscreen. "Shinji! It turned. It's coming right for you!"

"What is? I can't see anything!" he snapped, spinning, and almost losing his balanced. Ducking behind the deep shadow cast by a building, he relaxed for a moment. "What. Am. I. Looking. For," he asked, flicking his attention away from the world outside to the connection down to the Geocity.

"You're..." Misato began, before trailing off. "You're..." She was pale, her mouth shaped into an 'oh' of shock. "It's... it's gone."

"What do you mean, it's gone?" he snapped, adrenaline running through his veins, and making the hands on the control yoke shake.

"There's... there's no Pattern Blue anymore," Ritsuko said, slowly, each word unconnected to the previous one. This was not a patronising tone of voice; it was muffled by the fact that she had a knuckle in her mouth. "It's gone. Sensors are reading all clear."

The boy said nothing, breath shuddery as the mental exertion hit him. "Seriously?" he asked, hyperventilating, not even really noticing the thickness or the vile taste of the LCL.

"Apparently."

"S-so, all of this, all of _this_ was for nothing." He groaned. "There's going to be hell to explain at school," he added, with a sudden giggle, which turned into another groan. "They kicked down the door, you know," he added, leaning forwards, resting his head on his armoured forearms.

"No, don't relax yet," snapped the Major. "Ritsuko, you are going to get a full decontamination team up there as soon as possible. I want Unit 01 taken to Quarantine Dome Beta. I want a full check, including internal systems. Understand. As Director of Operations and as an officer of the New Earth Government Army, I am refusing to let Unit 01 back down into the Geocity until I have been personally convinced that Zero-One has not picked up... whatever that was... as some kind of diminutive hitchhiker. Do I make myself clear?"

Ritsuko took her reddened knuckle out of her mouth, and nodded. "Perfectly. As Director of Science, I support you fully in this."

"Good." Misato sighed. "And now I'm going to have to try to explain this to the Representative and the European Triumverate... and probably the Minsister of War, if she gets herself involved, and she will. What am I supposed to tell them? 'It magically vanished as soon as we deployed Unit 01?' Or maybe, 'Well, we don't have any evidence it actually existed as more than a sensory anomaly' Really... could it have been a false alarm caused by astronomical phenomena?" She sighed. "I don't know. What I do know, is this is going to produce stupid amounts of paperwork for me."

* * *

Gendo Ikari stared over the top of steepled gloves at the other members of the Ashcroft Council of Representatives. He could see the stress humming in his peers' veins, the concern and worry evident.

"Ladies, gentlemen," he said. "This was not a false alarm." He paused. "However, the source of the phenomenon is not known. It did not correspond with the signature emitted by Harbinger-3, Asherah. That entity is dead."

"Then, what was it?" asked the snowy-haired Representative for Africa, the eldest of the individuals around the table.

Christina Egger, the Representative for Research, leant forwards, a smile on her lips. "I do hope you have eliminated the obvious candidates, Ikari," she said calmly.

Gendo stared back. "Naturally."

"Are you _sure_?" That smirk was still hovering there.

That was a matter of concern. The Representative for Research had her own sources of information, he was aware of that. That meant that she had assets he was not aware of, just as he had ones that he knew she did not know of.

"Yes," he said, flatly. "The Magi have determined that it was from an unknown entity which would be classified as a Herald, at minimum."

"But was it a Harbinger?" asked Society, urgently. "That is what is relevant."

Gendo leaned back, slightly. "It is impossible to say, Jeltje," he said, a slight condescending note entering his voice. "Entities of this level have an animiaic waveform of such magnitude that the nuances are entirely lost. We can track where it was, by where it burnt out the relevant sensors."

"Yes, Ikari," said Oversight, adjusting her own arglasses. "And if we track the path, it flicks across the London Administrative Area."

"Can we be sure that it was looking there, though?" added North America. "How do we know that it was not looking elsewhere on Earth, in places which we lack detection equipment?"

Gendo nodded. "Correct. We cannot be truly certain."

The Representative for Oceania, the youngest on the Council by over ten years, and the only Nazzadi not a product of the Migou gene-vats, crossed her hands in front of her. "In that case, Ikari, I believe we cannot speculate any further, and to do so is counterproductive. At least, not until the specialist teams have extracted more information from what limited data we have."

Asia leant forwards. "Rimy is correct. All we can do is maintain our readiness, and be wary for any more such events."

There was a broad consensus that such a course was for the best.

"In that case, would there be any protests to ending this emergency meeting here?" the Representative for Asia continued. She smiled, wrinkles bunching at the corner of her eyes. "It's getting early here, and we seem to have covered everything we need to."

The meeting was adjourned, and one by one, the virtual images of the Representatives blinked out of existence.

Gendo Ikari, Representative for Europe, deactivated the link, and removed his arglasses, blinking heavily as the light came back up. The man pinched his brow, running his fingers over closed eyelids. It would be a lot less painful, he knew, if he could use harcontacts, or even simply have his eyes removed, and replaced with improved Eyes, complete with optical jacks and a rebuilt optical nerve which connected the eye together the right way around. Arglasses were an obsolete solution, in a purely technical aspect.

And yet he continued to use them. Why was that?

Putting them back on, he looked up, and blinked; the only overt sign of his shock.

"Rei," he said calmly.

The girl, skin the colour of fresh snow, protective lens still over her replaced eye, stood in front of his desk. She was not moving, not making a sound. How long had she been waiting there, for him to notice her? Impossible to say, without consulting the security footage. At least she was mobile again, and possessed binocular vision, even if one arm was still bound in a cast.

"Yes, Representative Ikari," she said. Her voice was cold, a flat, dead monotone. Some would have viewed it as a tone of contempt, even of hatred. Gendo knew better.

"Rei, why are you here?" he asked.

She raised her mobile hand, a datapad clutched within. "It was hard to type with one hand," she said, by way of explanation for the delay.

Gendo nodded, a faint smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. He had not expected her to be done so soon; a mistake, he realised in retrospect. "Thank you, Rei," he said, reaching out with one gloved hand to take the thin device. "I checked your medical report; I note that there is only bruising and a minor fracture to heal now."

"Yes." The girl paused. "I do not wish to experience that again, unless it is necessary."

"I do not believe it will be, Rei," the man said.

She said nothing.

"That is all, Rei."

She tilted her head slightly, resting her free arm on the broken one. "You do not _know_ what that was, Representative Ikari," she said, voice level. "You have merely deduced what it was."

Gendo looked at her for a second, before standing up, a wave of his hand setting part of the wall of the dome which was his office to transparency. The light from the false sun above streamed in, the light in the office adapting to remove the shadows. With a few measured paces, he was over by the window, staring out from his cold, dead, clinical office onto the greenery.

"Correct," he said simply.

"Logic can be replicated," she said. Was that a hint of chiding in her voice? "Logic has been replicated."

"Yes," he said, still staring out.

"And there are others who _know_, Representative Ikari."

Closing his eyes, letting the light paint his world red through the eyelids, he took a deep breath, as he leant forwards. Under his palm, he could feel the fractional, almost negligible curve of the hemisphere. It was, despite its transparency, perfectly solid and unyielding.

But that was always a problem, wasn't it? Things that might seem plane would turn out to be subtly distorted.

"Thank you, Rei," he said, turning back to face the girl. "You can..."

Rei Ayanami had already gone.

~'/|\'~


	6. Chapter 5: Absent Communication

**Chapter 5**

**Absent Communication / As if the vanward clouds of evil days had spent their malice**

**EVANGELION**

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"_Not coping well after NH's death. I miss her. So does everyone else. Funereal was today; closed coffin, obviously. Saw her parents crying, couldn't say anything to them. None of us could. Everything to do with M is classified. Muttered some condolences. They were just crying. DN is still in hospital... she said she'll be getting new legs by the end of the month. She managed to make the funereal; probably forced them to let her go at gunpoint, knowing her. SM resigned; he feels guilty, saw what happened in full. Not surprising. Really hope that he doesn't do something stupid; told them, off the record, to keep an eye on him. Think they were going to anyway; for the best. Him and NH were close. Foundation will be assigning new team supervisor. Don't know who it will be. CS thinks that KI isn't going to get it, that they're going to send in someone else. AV, JK and NA agree, KS and OR don't. Don't know what I feel. God. NH was just alive when we got into the test chamber. I don't get how she was still breathing. M managed to tear the restraints clean off, and just went berserk. Wasn't like the blastscreen was going to keep anyone safe from that._

_Don't understand how it managed to get free. Doesn't make sense. Not much to do with M does."_

Personal Diary of Anton Miyakame,  
23rd of July, 2072

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**Monday, 20th of September, 2091**

Shinji Ikari's eyes snapped open as soon as the alarm went off, but he did not move. He simply lay there, eyes staring up at the featureless ceiling. No... that wasn't quite true. There was a lump just to the right of the middle, where the plaster was slightly cracked. A small spider, only visible as a speck of discolourment in the mists of the dusty threads of its web, seemed to have taken up residence around the break.

He blinked heavily, and shifted in bed, rubbing the side of his face against the pillow, and slowly levered himself upright, to a sitting position.

"Would you like to hear the morning news, Shinji?" asked his muse, much as she did every morning. "It is currently 7:12 am. Remember, you need to leave the house by 8:10 am, if you are to arrive on time."

"Yeah, yeah," he muttered, sitting on the edge of his bed.

"... reports of widespread successes against Migou landers, striking north against Australia from both Antartica and New Zealand. Military sources are now reporting that this appears to have been nothing more than a testing attack, both from the Loyalist-heavy composition of the forces, and the immediate withdrawal when they hit Navy resistance. The Armed Forces will be giving a formal statement in three quarters of an hour." The newsreader cleared her throat. "In economic news, the GFTS," she pronounced the abbreviation for the Global Financial Trading System as one would 'gifts', "is up ten points, currently standing at 13,342, following a strong boost to the games sector after the unveiling of the new Apotheon Infinity, the latest dedicated gaming system from Processerion, which led to a forty point climb in Chrysalis shares. Meanwhile, the Chair of the Nazzadi Business League..."

Shinji picked up his folded clothes from his chair, placing them on his bed, and frowned. Things... were not going well at school. He personally blamed whoever had used the highest level of "grab the pilot and run" for that thing which had turned out to be a false alarm. They could have just done one of the lower ones, even merely sent him a message to leave the classroom before the armed escort arrived, but _noo~ooo_. Apparently that would have been too much effort; that, or they had just been panicking too much. There had been far too many strange looks for the rest of the week, and things had been worse yesterday. Apparently, there had been 'discussions' between overenthusiastic classmates. The kind of discussions that involved Grid searches, and there had been occasional problems with privacy-breaking journalists back when he was only special because of who his father was.

If he were feeling more sympathetic, he might have been able to understand the mindset which they were coming from. It wasn't every day, after all, that a classmate get snatched during lessons by heavily armoured and armed Ashcroft security troops. Even at an Academy. It was understandable that they might start asking questions of him, and... well, in honesty, he wasn't a good enough liar to be able to conceal the fact that _something_ was going on. Not that he was stupid enough to actually let anything slip, because he quite liked his personal freedom, thank you very much, but there were strictly defined limits to what he could conceal without looking like he was concealing something.

And, so, as it was, he was feeling rather unsympathetic, poorly inclined towards the Evangelion Group for putting him through this, and just wanted to get through school for a few weeks so that the rumours could die down again. Gods, the meeting with the OIS at the weekend had been bad enough. He didn't need his classmates digging into his background and interrogating him _too_.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Right... so, what have we gathered?"

The only good thing about Monday mornings was that... wait, there wasn't any good thing about Monday mornings, if one were to take the mode opinion among the students currently trickling into the classroom. It felt like a chilly, cold, depressing morning. Of course, since this was in an arcology dome, the weathers systems were controlled, and so were the normal, designed-to-be-pleasant temperature (with a moisture cycle not planned until this evening), so the mimicry of climate was completely inappropriate for how most people were feeling. Jony leant back, and sighed. But internally, so Dathan wouldn't hear. _Nothing, because I wasn't going to waste my weekend... well, what weekend I got, because we still have to attend school on Saturday mornings, and my father made me do something with my little brother on Sunday. So I did precisely nothing, __and enjoyed doing it. And then remembered this morning, and searched it on the Grid._

She noticed the boy was staring at her, and coughed. "It's the right name," she said, trying to make it sound like she cared. "I cross-checked."

The brown-haired boy's face settled into a scowl. "Is that all?" he asked.

"I checked too," interjected Enu, leaning in, and getting (in the _nazzady_'s opinion) a little too close. "There are pictures... low res ones, but, I got a squirt from the Region 11 networks, and... yeah, the face is right

"Now, that's a lot better!" Dathan said, in a rather more enthusiastic voice. "That's living up to the goal of the OIS Cadets!

_Dathan, just listen to yourself. We're not real OIS Agents. I do it because you drag me around, and have since we were... seven, or something, and because it's an easier Social Work Task than having to trek all the way to a primary school to read to small children or anything. Children of all sorts are annoying, and more trouble than they're worth._

The door to the classroom slid open again, the temperature dropping slightly, as air circulated. "Oh, hello," Hikary could be heard to say. "How are you feeling?" she added, with a hint of caution in her voice.

There was a pause. "The pain is reduced," a clinical, cold voice replied. "There is mild discomfort as the bones finish healing."

"Well... that's good," the _amlaty_ said to Rei, trying not to stare at the anti-septic seal still covering one eye, or the pale blue cast over one arm. "Uh... have you managed to keep up to date with the work? I mean," she gave a slightly forced laugh, "you're not expected to have done it all, but..."

"I have."

"Excuse me?"

"I have completed all the work which was set."

"Oh." Hikary, as most people were forced to do at least one per conversation with Rei Ayanami, blinked, and reset her inner expectations. Nevertheless, however, she pushed on. "Do you need someone to help you write or type?" the Class Representative asked, eyes dropping to the still-bound arm.

"No." There was a pause. "Thank you for the cards and the flowers," Rei said, almost mechanistically.

Hikary smiled; a somewhat self-satisfied little grin. "Oh, really, it was nothing," she said, with a flick of her pigtails. "It was the least that we could do."

"No." The other girl blinked heavily at that word from Rei. "The least you could have done would have been to do nothing. You did more than that."

Internally, Hikary squinted. _That... that seems to be thanks, didn't it? On the other hand, it might just have been a technical correction._ She blinked, slowly. Nozomy certainly wasn't this hard to read. The Class Representative stepped aside, to let the other girl manoeuvre past her to her customary seat next to the window, in front of the Cadets clique, and, with a shrug returned to her seat.

"It must have been pretty bad, if Rei's still in a cast after a month," Ala said to her, red eyes looking up from his PCPU. Hikary liked Ala; he was from an Integrationist family, and their fathers got on, but she also know that he _liked_ her. Which was a little uncomfortable, because she didn't feel the same way. "What was it, a car crash?"

"Yes. And... yes, that must have been bad, for such a long absence." _Transplanted limb bad,_ was what neither of them said, even if there were slight winces. The simple fact was that these kind of injuries were rare, that the mass proliferation of public transport had radically decreased certain types of injuries which, even fifty years earlier, would have been commonplace, in a society with ubiquitous personal transport. There were the conflicts of the Aeon War, of course, but they were kept far away from society, and medical treatment was such that the physical scars, at least were repairable. For a person to end up in hospital for a month, from brute trauma, was rare enough to be something shocking. At least in the privileged socioeconomic bracket of the Academy students.

Hikary glanced back at the pale figure, book (and it was actually a hardcopy book, rather than a booklike PCPU, which was the norm) already in the free hand. Her eyebrows rose in surprise, as she noticed that Taly Talerni oy Chicago-twi oy Londoni-twi vy Nosesudevorazy vy Salenity (there was a sardonic twist in her thoughts, over the fact that the girl insisted on using a full Nazzadi-style name) and Kensuke Aida were sitting over in a corner, talking with a certain intensity which was far more than a casual chat. That was surprising. The girl was the unofficial head of the... well, 'Traditionalist' wasn't the right word, considering that the original Nazzadi culture had been designed by the Migou sometime this century, and the attempts to create a cohesive identity post-dated the Nazzadi Civil War, but "non-Integrationist" summed up all the disjointed cultural groupings, and (the _amlaty_ thought, disapprovingly) tended to self-segregate. And she was less than kind to people from Integrationist families. To see her talking like that to a human was... unusual.

The Class Representative shrugged. She severely doubted that anyone could be interested in _that_ way in Kensuke Aida, let alone a Nazzadi culture-fanatic. Unless... yes, that would be it. Hikary felt stupid for not thinking of it earlier. If there was one thing which the two had in common, it would have to be an obsessive love of military technology. Shaking her head at the silliness, the girl returned to the conversation of her friends.

"I think it was just a good thing you had a recorder on," Kensuke said in a low voice.

The Nazzadi girl flicked her hair, dyed red streaks standing out from the black, and grinned. "I always do," she explained. "It's much easier to just record all classes. Helps with revision."

The boy nodded. "Makes sense." He glanced down at his PCPU. This was not his main device; that was sitting on his desk. This was a smaller, specialist one; one with a surplus of internal memory and processing capabilities, which could function perfectly well when not connected up to the Grid. Which it was not, right now. Everybody knew that the Academy monitored your activities when you were using the AIG, and what they were doing right now was... well, they didn't know for sure that it was illegal, largely because they didn't know exactly what they were looking into, but both students knew that what they were doing could probably end up legally problematic, if they found out too much.

"Did you manage to clean up the sound on your end?" Taly asked. "I did, but... yeah, nice to have a second opinion. What were you using?"

"AudioRedact 5."

"Ah. I used Solilaki-Laki-Soli."

"I tried that... didn't like the user-interface, and... well," Kensuke paused, "... it read like they'd just stuck the text into a freeware translator from the Nazzadi."

Taly looked around, checking that no-one else was trying to listen in. "It's actually a better piece of software in every way. Naturally. _Some_ of us have a slightly better sense of hearing than baseline humans." She'd told her friends it was something niche, that he owed her a favour, and neither of them wanted to be caught. "My end..." She held out the screen. On it were the words, 'Go! Secure the Third Child!', 'Protocol Echo, sir,' 'Why, what...', 'This way,' 'I'm needed in the (Eva/EVA)?' and 'Come this way, sir. Don't talk.'

Kensuke compared them to the words he'd got, and didn't make a remark on the fact that humanity had notably better colour vision than the Nazzadi, who had sacrificed (which was to say, the Migou had sacrificed it for them) it for superlative night vision. "Yes, matches perfectly. Same uncertainty over Eva/EVA, too. Might be a name, might be Extravehicular Activities."

There was a sniff from the girl. "I would think that the use of 'the' is enough to indicate that it's a proper noun, don't you?" she said, with a hint of acrimony.

"Yeah, but the way people talk is like that." Kensuke leant closer, huddling over his screen. This was going to be more delicate... after all, all that they'd admitted to having done so far was listen to speech in a public location. The boy rummaged around in a pocket, pulling out a cable. "Connect them up, and... you know..." he said.

She did know. Even if typing would be slower, it would also prevent eavesdropping. Of course, wireless communication was, and had been ever since its inception, an open invitation to listening in, and, especially in an era when there were quantum computers, most forms of non-quantum encryption were trivially breakable. It was rumoured that the school used a full suite of ghost LAIs to monitor every electromagnetic signal (which, incidentally, meant that the science labs were supposed to be more secure, if you wanted to do something that the Academy wouldn't approve of, thanks to all the random electromagnetic fluctuations which ISCIAT and ISCHAT lab work produced) which was sent from within the arcology dome.

Of course, that was the same sort of rumour which claimed that there were hidden cameras in all the toilets and showers which had been installed by one of the slightly creepy biology teachers, and was widely viewed to be a _little_ bit on the paranoid side. If only because of the fact that there was no real need to use proper ghost LAIs to deal with the sort of things that an average student could get up to on a safe network, when a multipurpose drone would do the job perfectly well.

There was a flick, as the devices recognised the connection, and started the messaging client.

ArmoureDRusH: So, I focussed on the mention of Eva/EVA. Nothing specific on Protocol Echo... just a general name.

Zidony: Probably go from Alpha to Zulu. Agreed.

Zidony: Standard code name.

Zidony: But is it counting down, or up?

ArmoureDRusH: Is Alpha bad or good, you mean?

Zidony: Yeah.

ArmoureDRusH: Dunno.

ArmoureDRusH: On the Eva thing. Just searching for the word on the Grid churns up tonnes of stuff. It's a short word. Plenty of stuff.

Zidony: I started to narrow it down. I checked the SWP timetable. He spends his time down in the Geocity. It's an AF place.

ArmoureDRusH: ... and we know that he's the Rep's son. Just slacking? Family connections to get him away from

"No," Taly said out loud, shaking her head. Obviously, she was reading over his shoulder, even as he typed. Kensuke deleted that sentence.

Zidony: Doubt it. You don't drag someone out like that with no warning, and he's not the only one here with senior AF people for parents. Did you see that armour? That wasn't VIP stuff. That was high grade SPHCA. Military grade.

ArmoureDRusH: That was awesome.

Zidony: Oh, yes. I'd love to get my hands on one. And you were right at the time. That was the Eschaton XI-F. It was at ArmachamExpo this year. Can't you just see the Nazzadi influences in the design?

Kensuke looked up. No, he really couldn't. It was the kind of heavy, overengineered design beloved of _Homo sapiens sapiens_ which could take a 20mm shell to the chest, and maybe not die (although the wearer wouldn't be in a very good shape, and it had a fair chance of being a mission kill, just from momentum transfer). Although... he opened another window... now that she mentioned it, there was something about the legs, under the exterior plating...

ArmoureDRusH: We can talk about MilSpec any time.

Zidony: Yeah. Even if H bitches at us about it.

ArmoureDRusH: So... let's sum it up.

Zidony: ...

Zidony: ...

Zidony: Yeah. Pointless. Nothing concrete.

ArmoureDRusH: At least we know where to start looking.

Taly smirked at Kensuke, looking up, as she popped out the cable, passing it back to him. "Oh, I don't know," she said out loud. "One of the things that's quite easy is knowing _where_ to ask." She paused. "Uh, I mean, sort of like how... I would say _perukweranaby_, because Reformed English doesn't really have the right word... possible-asking. Asking in a way that makes people give away things you didn't know."

Kensuke tapped his fingers on the desk. "Really?"

The girl leaned forwards with a slightly predatory grin. "Oh, yes. Especially on boys."

The aforementioned boy shifted uncomfortably, feeling suddenly a little hot under the collar. "Uh... talk to you tomorrow?" he asked, voice raising in questioning.

Taly nodded. "You were right. 'Least we know where to look, now."

At the front of the classroom, the door opened, and Shinji Ikari slunk on. He wasn't late, technically speaking, but the classroom was full... fuller than he'd expected. Which was to say, someone he really hadn't expected to see here was here. His eyes locked upon milk-white skin and snow-like hair, and he flinched back slightly.

_grey eyes._

_orange fluid._

_utter darkness._

He swallowed, and shook his head. _Calm down, Shinji,_ he told himself. _It makes sense that she'd be here. They'd mentioned that she went to the same school. She's the 'First Child', you're the 'Third'._ He paused, and briefly wondered who the 'Second' was, then. Could it be someone else in this room? No... no, he'd have seen them down in the Geocity, and now that he'd thought of it, he was sure that Misato had mentioned that the Second was somewhere else. Yes. It made sense. And it would make sense to get to know Rei, as a... co-worker was the right phrase, considering that he was actually getting paid for this. He'd just have to get around to talking to her...

Shinji suddenly blushed. The fact that he was disturbed to see her... oh no, people were going to interpret it as if he had some kind of _problem_ with _sidoci_. More than a few people had noticed his twitch, upon sight of Rei. And he couldn't deny it, because he couldn't explain about the Evangelions, and if he tried to deny it, he'd look like he was just trying to cover up.

He did not _need_ this right now!

At the back of the classroom, Kensuke snapped his fingers. "Fishing for information! That was the English phrase!" He sunk back down, as the others stared at him.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

It was 10 am, and four suited men and women were sitting on one side of a table. The wall opposite to them was a multifaceted viewscreen, tens of static portraits facing them, waiting for the start of the meeting. There was a common feel about all the faces, too; a certain cut of the hair and set of the face, despite the heterogeneous mix of subspecies and ethnicities.

The white-haired, grey-eyed man sitting on the far right cleared his throat, and glanced down at his watch. "We're only waiting for Pretoria-B, aren't we?" the _sidoca_ asked, with a hint of boredom in his voice blended with the nervousness.

The _nazzada_ to his right ran a hand through his prematurely greying hair, and shook his head. "No," the older man, Agent Para (to use the Nazzadi tendency to use the first name with titles, rather than the pseudo-surname of the matropatronym, or the deed-name) said. "Pretoria-B isn't on this. Orders from the top, from Director Gohda. He's assigned them to the SSTF on Non-Governmental Organisations C, and so they're not allowed to sit in on A meetings." He shrugged, wearily. "Standard policy for preventing cross-contamination. Makes everything more difficult, of course." Shaking his head, he added, "We're waiting for Captain Joyeuse."

They waited in silence. Although the State Security Task Force on Non-Governmental Organisations (A), more colloquially (or, at least, more pronounceably) known as Grigori-A, was an OIS-dominated organisation, there were others, like Captain Joyeuse who were from the Global Intelligence Agency (although, to complicate matters further, she was technically from the New Earth Government Army, on permanent secondment to the GIA, as both the GIA and the OIS were civilian agencies and thus their military forces were technically from the Army or Navy), or the Federal Security Bureau. There were even a few individuals from the Office of Special Services, the feared, legally-non-existent penultimate agency, which dealt with threats of a cosmic nature; the bland, entirely (almost suspiciously) nondescript face of the sole representative was isolated in the bottom left corner of the viewscreen.

A human leaned around his co-worker, to look at the young _sidoci_ with a hint of compassion. "You're worried, aren't you?" he asked, in a tone of voice which wasn't really a question.

Junira Julusanari nodded, a jerking movement of his head. "A little," he admitted, his voice stiff and formal. "I... I have to say, I didn't expect to end up interviewing such a high-value target. Let alone to be giving such a report to a State Security Task Force on Non-Governmental Organisations."

"You'll be fine. We have full recordings of the interviews, after all. What we're looking for is gut feelings, personal perceptions, rather than raw biometric data."

"With respect, sir," the younger man straightened up his chin, "I am familiar with the procedure. I do know that I need to justify my decisions and questioning choices to the SSTF. You don't need to ease me into it easily." The corners of his mouth twitched up slightly. "That is not to say that I do not appreciate the attempts to ease me in," he added. "And I did grasp that you wanted a rookie to be talking to him, in front of those Ashcroft lawyers, even if you were feeding me the questions. I noticed the parapsychic badge on one of them." The look in his grey eyes was knowing.

"Actually, no." The voice from behind them had a hint of harshness underlying the melodic tones; almost akin to how a singer with smoke-damaged lungs might sound. "She's merely an AC03-Observational, not any kind of mind-reader." The heavy sounding footsteps as Captain Ori Joyeuse scraped a chair into position were quite out of type with how she quietly she had entered. The woman herself was short and stocky, and, from what could be seen under her tan uniform, very heavily muscled; the sort of physique which only came about from experience in the sort of cleansing teams which operated in terrain too dense or broken up for power armour. The sort of physique, in fact, which, to those in the know, came as much from artificial musculature and subdermal implants as it did from human biology. "Now, that does mean that she's terrifyingly good at reading body language and those kind of subtle social cues, but that's not even something she has to legally wear ID for. She does so as a courtesy, under Ashcroft Foundation internal policy."

"Makes a _sulusanginojy_ good lawyer, I know that," grunted Agent Gjorgji Mile, the eldest of the men at the table, and until the arrival of Captain Joyeuse, the only human. Not that fact meant that he didn't swear in Nazzadi. "I've dealt with her before. She's far too good at it for it to be..." he gave a self-depreciating chuckle, "... well, for it to be fair."

"Which is why we sent in someone who knew nothing about it," added the younger of the two Nazzadi, his hair prematurely iron-grey despite his youth. "What did you think of him, of it, Junira?" he asked the _sidoca_.

"In all honesty, well, you've seen the tapes," the White answered. "The 'what happened in the attack' bit went normally. I was... well, in truth I was somewhat surprised to find that the Harbinger almost stood on him." He shook his head. "Of all the bad luck. Although," he added, in a more thoughtful tone, "it raises other questions. Like, where, exactly, were his bodyguards? I find it impossible to believe that a potential target like that would be permitted to travel without minders."

"That's my general problem with it," interjected Captain Joyeuse, running a hand through her close-cropped hair. "There are just too many... coincidences," the word was said with disgust, "for it to be so. He happens to arrive on the same day as Harbinger-3 shows up, it happens to head for the AG arcology he was in, getting close enough to almost stand on him, and then there's the thing about how he's saved at the last moment by an Ashcroft Armacham squad from traitor ArcSec officers. A squad led by an Ashcroft-seconded NEGA Major, and accompanied by two Nephilim... high end combat models, too. Not that there are any other kind for those _things_, of course." She shook her head. "It sounds like the start to a bad film, really. And yet we've seen the video footage, from both the stuff in the airport, as well as the helmetcams, guncams, and unitcams from the Armacham squad. Now, the latter especially could have been forged," it wasn't as if it was that hard in a world with easy access to computing power and video-editing software, "but what would they have to gain by telling such a contrived and unrealistic story?"

"It's so stupidly false that it might actually be real. Sucks to be him, though. Although I wouldn't mind betting against him at poker, if he's that unfortunate."

"He must have been really glad to get down to the safety of the Geocity," added Agent Mile, with a barked laugh.

"And that was when everything started getting vaguer, and the lawyer kept on interrupting and advising the boy... Shinji... to keep silent." The man with skin the colour of snow sighed. "Perfectly legally, of course. He was just in for questioning as a witness, he wasn't a suspect or anything. He had all his human rights. And what happened afterward he was safe wasn't relevant to the questioning. But it's _annoying_ when you can't get a sentence out without someone else interrupting."

"They're concealing something," said Captain Joyeuse. "The Foundation are, and given the way that he disappears frequently into one of the null-surveillance zones in the Geocity, one of the ones sealed under NEGA orders," she paused, "I suspect that they might be abusing the NSZ exemptions. They're meant to only be used for sensitive research," she added, with disapproval.

"So, what do you think, Junira?" asked Agent Hikara, the taciturn man finally speaking.

"Honestly," Junira answered, "I believe that, yes, he probably was the target for the rogue ArcSec officers. It just seems to match up with everything; the way they were herding things, and, of course, the way that, as ArcSec, it's their job to check people one by one. If things had gone as planned," he shook his head, "well, I suspect that Shinji Ikari would have vanished at some checkpoint, when he 'failed' a blood scan, and was escorted away for higher level tests. It was... worryingly well planned out."

"That does seem to be the consensus," the older man agreed. "And the way that ArcSec was compromised like that..." The man winced. "I refuse to believe that they would send someone with no bodyguards on a plane just like that," he said slowly. "It makes no sense. And I was with the FSB's VIP unit before I came to the OIS. I know what I'm talking about. There's something else going on."

"Doppelganger-replacement of bodyguards?" The question from Agent Para was clipped.

"Possible. But... well, they should have been caught by the checks on plane travel."

"Which means that, either we've just found there's a new threat, who can replace people perfectly, and escape past full airport-type security; bloodchecks, brainscans, psych-profiling..."

"... or they don't exist, and we're just clutching at straws," said Captain Joyeuse, sardonically. "Just like everything else when trying to get this incident to make sense."

_For example, who then who were the others? Who were the civilian group?_ was the question all of them were thinking, as the larger meeting with the rest of Grigori-A began, to report on the interview.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

It was now evening, and the mournful sounds of a cello filled the apartment, as Misato settled down on the sofa, sinking deep into the cushions with a squeak of springs. Wincing slightly as an off note indicated the slip of a finger, she broke the seal on a can with a snap, and took a slow, thoughtful mouthful.

A white penguin with little beady red eyes waddled past her, a towel slung over one shoulder. She paid him no... _wait a minute!_

"Hey! Pen-Pen! That's one of my towels!"

"Wark?"

"You've got your own. Use them. Don't make mine smell of bird!"

"Waaa~aaark..." The bird sounded slightly affronted, but turned on its heel... if one could indeed describe the bit there the back of a bird's foot met the bottom of its leg as a heel, as Misato had a feeling that the heel was something to do with bones that humans had and birds didn't...

Urgh. She needed another drink, if she was still thinking like this. She was trying to _unwind_ after a hard day, and she did not need to have the military part of her brain start obsessing over what to call a penguin's heel. _Stupid overtrained connection-making not-realising-that-I'm-off-duty head._

She silenced that particular part of her thoughts with the rest of the can of beer, and, crushing the emptied can in her fist, tossed the ball into the new bin. A small cheer and a fist thrust into the air accompanied the successful in-off-the-wall throw. It was certainly the new bin, because Shinji had written on it, in marker pen, "BEER CAN BIN: FOR RECYCLING" in English, Japanese, and, quite possibly to show off, Nazzadi as well. It was a little pathetic in her opinion, but she was willing to make this kind of small compromise, if it was going to make life easier.

Perhaps in some kind of response to her thoughts, there was a loud _twang_ from the other room, a yelp of pain, and she was sure that, immediately after that, she heard a long, frustrated sigh in the silence which followed.

"What was that?" she asked, when Shinji, a few minutes later, entered the room, rubbing the palm of his right hand.

"One of the strings broke," the boy answered, a tone of sullen annoyance in his voice. He raised his hand, to show the livid welt across the flesh. "The tip just caught me."

"Ouch."

"Yes. Yes, it does hurt." He sighed. "And I don't have any replacements, either. I'm going to have to find somewhere that sells them." Shinji paused. "Come to think of it, I should probably just get a pack. The higher pitched strings always end up breaking a lot more than the lower ones."

Misato frowned. "Why not just make a new one?" she asked.

There was a faint look of horror on the boy's face. "As in, use a home nanofac one?" he asked, in seeming disbelief. "No, really, no." He shuddered slightly.

"I wouldn't have put you down as some kind of musical purist." Misato paused. Actually, come to think of it, she would. That kind of passive-aggressive obsessively-cleaning personality was likely to make a fuss over two different types of string which sounded identical to her.

"I'm not. It's just..." Shinji paused. "Well, firstly, for the type of string I use, it's a mix of P-O and T-M modes, and quite a lot of home ones don't really combine them that well..."

"... mine does," Misato said, with a smirk.

"Well, okay. But the point is, a proper one... you know." Shinji realised that she probably didn't know, and didn't feel like explaining right now. "Um... well, a proper string is metal-coated, but on the inside, it's catgut... not actual catgut," he reassured her, even though she didn't seem that distressed, "that's just what it gets called. And, well, if it isn't done properly, you end up with this really tinny note. You can really hear the difference when you're actually playing... not that I'm brilliant, by any means, but it's still obvious to a musician, or just someone who's still learning, like me..."

Leaning back, and rubbing the strap of her top idly, the black-haired woman sighed. This wasn't interesting at all. Time to change topic. "It did sound very nice," she said. "Have you joined the school orchestra, yet?" she asked.

Shinji shook his head, a slight pout on his lips. "No. Because, as I mentioned the last time you asked, the string section has its practice after school on Wednesdays. Which I can't make. For some reason. You wouldn't happen to know why, would you?"

Ouch. He was getting sarcastic. And a little worked up. "It was very pretty," Misato said hastily. "What was it?"

She was fixed with a level stare. "I was practicing scales when it broke," said Shinji, his voice flat and controlled.

"... they were very _pretty_ scales."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**Tuesday, 21st of September, 2091**

The smell of food wafted through the lunch hall. That was one real, concrete advantage of the Academy over other schools; the food was really, really good. In quite shocking disregard for the stereotypes which fiction would propagate about the quality of school food, the Ashcroft Foundation had decided that the benefits of actually having a proper on-site kitchen more than outweighed the (to them) trivial costs of doing so. As Shinji carried his tray back from the counter, he thanked this one little comfort to his day. It was nice not having to cook. Yes, technically, he didn't have to, as Misato was willing to cook once in a while. Technically, he also didn't have to keep on breathing. Technicalities were not useful in such circumstances.

And, looking around, his classmates and co-scholars did seem to be taking advantage of it. The place was crammed. Just from the lack of any seats at all, anywhere, he wouldn't be surprised if the take-up was universal.

No, not quite universal. He couldn't see any glimpse of Rei Ayanami. And it wasn't as if she could be hiding in here; white xenomixes, the _sidoci_, were not exactly hard to see. White was not a natural hair colour for teenagers, and those among the Nazzadi who did dye it were easy to distinguish. There were some Whites here, true; more than in the ambient population, because the increased number of _amlati_ naturally resulted in more of their variant siblings. Roughly one in every hundred xenomixed couplings produced a _sidoci_, and although the termination rate was notably higher (and not frivolously; a pre-natal parapsychic could be dangerous to bring to term, quite apart from the problems such children had) than baseline, they were a not unique. In fact, there was a whole table of them over there, a bleak white group. Many of them were wearing the identifying badges mandatory for someone with parapsychic abilities of a nature that it was felt that should not be kept secret. A vivid blue for those able to affect the mind, an orange-red for those with abilities that could hurt; the categories were broad. There were, in fact, noted human rights issues with such identifiers, and they were acknowledged. They were a messy solution to a messy problem. But when people compared them to the yellow stars of Nazi Germany, or the forehead tattoos of Byukan-era Malaysia, it was pointed out that, despite the ravings of conspiracy theory-obsessed lunatics, at no points in verifiable history had Judaism enabled one to set others on fire with one's mind, or sever heads with invisible lines of telekinetic force.

Shinji paused, as he realised that Rei actually didn't wear any identifying badges. That normally just meant that her abilities were internally focussed; more limited scope. But, no, he thought, as he finally found a seat, and began to eat, she wasn't here.

He vaguely wondered where she did eat, before putting the thought from his mind, and loosened his collar slightly, before picking up his knife.

On the other side of the room, however, there was a conversation with him firmly in mind. "I did a search... blank, pay-as-you-go PCPU, and not my muse, I should add," said Kensuke. "Tried a few spelling variations." He looked thoughtful. "Apart from the technical stuff, and the exocerebrum page, even with the muse's filters... well, heh," the thoughtful look turned into a slightly lecherous grin, "...turns out that a lot of porn stars are called Eva. Both male and female."

Taly snorted. "Of course there are. 'Ev-' is the stem of..." she waved her hand in the air, "... uh, well, it sort of translates as 'organic', 'plant-like'... but tall plants, like trees. And so when you add the male ending to it... no, 'male ending' isn't funny..."

"... I didn't say anything," Kensuke said, biting his lip as his face turned more than a little bit red.

"No, but you were going to. Anyway, when you shift it to the male variant 'eva', rather than the neuter, 'evi', which you would be using if you were talking about a normal tree or something, um, well..."

"I see. That actually makes sense." Kensuke exhaled. "It's like someone being called 'Woody', isn't it?"

"Yeah. Yeah, that would be it. Almost exactly. So... anyway, there's a lot of Eva porn out there."

"I found out." The boy sighed. "It wasn't helpful at all."

"You have to admit, if you were trying to hide it in plain sight, that kind of name would throw up massive amounts of data-spam to conceal the real project," Taly said.

"Yes, but then no-one would take it seriously. It'd be like an LAI system being called the..." Kensuke flapped a hand, "... Tactical... Information... Total... System, or something."

"That is kinda true." The girl narrowed her eyes. "But we've wasted enough time. See," she glanced from side to side, "I think I managed to find something. On a pilot's board." At Kensuke's glance, she shrugged. "I borrowed my older brother's log-in."

"Borrowed, or 'borrowed'."

"I _konfikatakrony_ it, if we're going to be correct," she said, with a smirk. At Kensuke's blank look, she sighed. "That's 'borrowed', yes."

"Was that borrowed or 'borrowed'?"

There was a disgusted noise. "Oh, forget about it. But... yes, you know the Engels?"

"How could I not?" And, indeed, Kensuke certainly knew about them. From their first field deployment, back in 2084, up to the modern day, the Engel-type arcanocyberxenobiological humanoid combat war machines had been a poster-child of the propaganda departments of the New Earth Government. Unlike conventional mecha, they were, one-on-one, superior to Migou units in the same weight category (which put them as considerably better than the Nazzadi Loyalist units, which, with the exception of the Elite, were starting to fall behind the tech-curve), and there was something about the image of a Malach, or, even better, a Seraph or Chashmal (the super-heavies, standing nearly twenty metres high), punching a super-heavy Migou unit in the face which just seemed to miraculously raise morale.

Of course, those familiar with actual military tactics knew that something had gone horribly wrong for both parties if one was that close to a Migou unit, because large units were vulnerable if they fell, and such an engagement was likely to end with both participants on the floor. And at the very least, even if they survived, the mecha pilot would have to put up with a week of hell from the tinheads in the tanks, who would be sure to rub it in. And make sarcastic comments about stable firing platforms, and optimised weight distributions, and low target profiles.

But, despite all this publicity, there was very little actually known about the Engels. They had come from almost nowhere, already in mass-production by the time that the first battlefield tests had begun, and the distribution of the publicity materials was very asymmetrical, favouring certain models (or, technically, groups of models, because the broad category of each Species, like the Hamshall or Aral, was actually composed of multiple Types) above others. It was certainly acknowledged universally that Dr Anton Miyakame was a genius, for the way that he been the driving force behind such an innovation. The fact that he fitted perfectly into the modern stereotype of the shy, driven, slightly obsessed and reclusive sorcerer-scientist only, perhaps ironically, made him more famous, if only for how well he fit the image.

"... and, you've heard of the proto-Engel?" Taly continued. "Of the _idea_ of the proto-Engel?"

Kensuke nodded. It was a continual rumour among military obsessives; the idea that there had been some kind of Engel-before-there-was-an-Engel, which had seen active field use. It was... not implausible. Of course there would have been test models and prototypes before the mass production models. There were plenty of theories on what it might have been, though. The majority position was that it was akin to the Malach (which, had, after all, been the first Species), but had been an inferior, unrefined subject; lightly armoured, and quasi-autonomous, piloted from a remote command vehicle. That was obviously a bad idea, but earlier in the War, the full horror of Migou emwar capabilities hadn't really been obvious. There were other, crazier ideas; dog-like close-combat units designed to be fired into orbit to board the Migou ships and tear them apart from the inside, skyscraper-sized insect-like centauroids with high-yield directed plasma weapons, even the idea that they had been testing the prototype in Las Vegas, before it had been destroyed by the Zone, that seeping hole in the fabric of reality which drove men mad, awakened latent parapsychics, and vomited forth _things_ alien to even the Second Arcanotech War.

"Well, look at this."

It was a simple plaintext file, obviously merely copied from some kind of forum post. It purported to be written by a mecha pilot stationed around London-2, who had been there for the attack by the extra-normal entity. That wasn't what the revelation was about, though. There had been another NEG unit there; something akin to an Engel, but much, much larger. They had known that it was an arcanocyberxenobiological organism, because it had bled, and roared, and all the other things that Engels did, but conventional units did not.

And there was the name which it had been called, as forces were pulled away from the capital-grade titan.

Evangelion.

Kensuke slowly closed his mouth. "Wow."

"I know." The girl's red eyes were alight.

"Wow."

"Yep." Taly smirked. "I think we can say that I win this one. And you owe me a favour for showing you this. Like, a big one."

Kensuke worked his jaw. "Yeah," he said, a little hoarsely. "Yeah, I think I really do."

Picking up her tray, she flashed chisel-like teeth at him. "And I'll be sure to remember it," she said, as she walked off.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"... now, for this kind of problem, we are assuming that the local gravity is constant, so we can use the standard value of 9.81 metres a second downwards, or a force of 9.81 Newtons, and, yes," the black-haired woman, her hair tied back in a tight bun, shot a piercing glance at the class, "we are operating in a one-state environment, so inertial mass is the same as gravitational mass, and all those _little_ things which those of you who read far ahead have heard about, are not applicable. We're trying to keep things simple. This is a simple question of harmonic motion, understand." She steepled her fingers on the desk, leaning forwards. "So, who among you wants to tell me how to start?"

Ms Sweet-Corazon was, it was generally agreed, impressively acerbic, and less politely, a complete _bitch_. On the other hand, her classes tended to get very good grade averages, even if they did have a wider standard deviation than others.

Either way, there was silence from the class in front of her.

"Oh, come on," she said, a slightly predatory smirk creeping over her lips. The hand of a brown haired _amlata_ crept up. "Ah, Mr Ullr. A volunteer."

The orange-eyed boy wetted his lips. "We have the limits, and we know the equation of motion, including the effects of the spring. We can set up the integral, and solve for time from there on in."

The teacher nodded. "Yes, that would be the sensible way to do it. Unfortunately, my _esteemed_ colleagues in the Mathematics department, on behalf of the Board of Education, have decided that you don't formally learn more advanced calculus... beyond the basics from your ISCIATs, that is... until just before Christmas, so cunningly spiting our attempts to make proficient scientists out of you lot. I do not personally believe that integration tools can compensate for a lack of actual knowledge." She paused. "And, in fact, there is no way to easily solve this, without the use of calculus. This leaves us with a conundrum."

Some of the brighter members of the class were already groaning.

"Quite. I believe this is called 'super-happy fun time' for you, yes?" Ms Sweet-Corazon was enjoying this a little bit more than was healthy. "You'll find you've been sent a full explanation of the techniques. I expect you to have read this by the next time we meet, as I will be setting you problems for your homework which require the use of trigonometric integrals. There is no excuse for not having done so."

_I'm a pilot of a forty-metre tall arcanxeno... biocyber... something something... robot, and have got training far too often. Obviously the fact that I'm responsible, in part, for your safety, is nothing to do with it, and is not a valid excuse at all,_ was what Shinji didn't say, even if he was thinking it very hard. And considering what a mess he made of the designation for the Evangelion, that was probably for the best. That, and the necessity for operational security.

"But, until you have read the documents, I want you to do Section 3a..." she paused, "... the odd numbered questions. Just go down the left hand side. Looking at the time, you should be able to get at least up to 9 done by the end of the lesson. If, that is," her tone clipped, "you do not spend all the time staring out of the window."

There was a pause.

"That comment was directed at you, Miss Ayanami," the teacher added, when the subtle hint did not seem to sink home. Rei turned to face her, one eye still covered in protective bandages, her head tilted slightly. "Answer the questions."

"I already know the answers," Rei said, her tone with a hint of confusion .

The teacher blinked twice. "What?"

"The answers to questions 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9, from exercise 3a." There was a slight downwards twitch of her mouth. "That was what you wanted answered."

The facial expressions pulled while resetting one's brain during a conversation with Rei could sometimes be rather amusing. All in all, Ms Sweet-Corazon did quite well, and managed to snap back to narrowed eyes almost instantly. "Then write them down, please. And pay attention to me when I am talking, even if you do know the answers."

Rei locked her eyes on the teacher, and nodded once, a precise movement of her neck.

"Well, what are the rest of you doing?" snapped the teacher, glaring at the rest of the class. "Obviously, if you can spare time to sit around, you must find all of this easy. I think you probably should have done 11, by the end of the lesson, if you have that much time..."

As the class filed out of the room, the babble of conversation began afresh, as soon as people had determined that the teacher was nowhere near.

"She is made of pure, unrelenting evil."

"I hear she springs this on every year. Believes the curriculum is, like, a suggestion, at best."

"I heard she can melt you into a pool of blood with a glare, and crawl on ceilings, because she was bitten by an arcanochromatically-tainted spider." There was the sound of someone being slapped around the back of the head. "What was that for, Kaga?"

"She's not a supervillan, Enitan. Idiot. It's not even as if you came up with a novel origin story." The Nazzadi boy glared. "Of course, if you actually did your homework, instead of copying off me, cramming at the last moment, and spending too much time playing games..."

"But that's against my religion!"

"Do you want to be hit again? In fact, do you want to have more stupid slapped out of you?"

"...no."

"So it's fair."

"Still religious discrimination." There was another slap to the back of the head.

"You know, repeated impacts to the skull can cause brain damage," interjected an orange-eyed _amlata_. "Although the human skull is designed to protect its contents, the principle of conservation of momentum still applies. In that case, the rigidity of the skull causes its own problems, as it is forced back, while the brain moves less, causing an impact with the inner wall." The boy paused. "Of course, that's probably still better than what would happen if the skull was cartilaginous," he added.

"That's our Mr Exocerebrum, that's for sure." The boy turned to his compatriot. "See, Kaga! You're the reason! I guess you just need to lend me your homew... ow!"

Standing behind the improvised pantomime, Shinji unconsciously pursed his lips a little. Not out of irritation (although, it should be noted, they were blocking the corridor, and slowing down traffic), but out of... well, he wasn't quite sure how to describe it. 'Bewilderment' would probably be an accurate approximation, though, with elements of 'amusement'. Of course, it still wasn't enough to compensate for the fact that the teacher had just dumped another set of extra-homework on them, and he was still behind compared to the rest of the class. And tomorrow was Wednesday, so he couldn't get anything done tomorrow.

Oh, boy. Tonight was not going to be fun. Why couldn't they have just had him personal-tutored or something? Anything that would have allowed them to schedule his education around the intermediate bouts of giant robot piloting? And, yes, it may have been illegal to home-school children, but Shinji was _fairly_ sure that it was also very much against the spirit of the law to put teenagers in capital-grade war machines and make them fight extranormal entities, and that hadn't stopped them. The sudden outbreak of law-abidingness of the Ashcroft Foundation and the Army when it came to little things like education regulations was a source of great disappointment, in fact. Disappointment, and annoyance.

He was broken out of his reverie by a tap on his shoulder.

"Mmmph?"

It was that Nazzadi girl, the one with the red streaks in her hair, and the brown-haired boy who always wore arglasses; the big, full-eye ones, not the more modern style that his father wore. _Oh. Ah. What were their names? Um... ah... um. Okay, I don't remember. Stay calm, Shinji, and just act like it's a perfectly normal conversation. Oh, why didn't I pay more attention when people were introducing themselves back when I joined? Now it'll be really embarrassing to just ask._

_No... no, it's okay. I'll just see if I can find a list of pictures of the class on the AIG, and then I can go memorise them, and then no-one has to do that embarrassing bit where everyone goes 'So, what was your name again?', and then they look at you with that slightly pitying look where they're obviously thinking 'I've already told you, why are you asking? Are you really that stupid?', and __then it's all a bit of a mess._

He realised that the other two were talking to him. 'At him' was probably a more correct way of putting things.

"... and I'm really not liking the way that she did that," the girl said. "I mean, it might be all right for some people, but, come on, the Physics modules aren't the easiest. I mean, one of my friends had her last year, and she's always been a _twihyohojy drekony_."

"Yeah, it's sort of..." Shinji blinked twice. "Wait, a 'wet tyrant'? Did you mean to say..."

The girl flashed a grin at him. "Heh. Didn't expect you to actually catch that. You didn't look like you were paying attention."

_I wasn't_ he thought. Out loud, he added, "I'm trying still to actually catch up with all the stuff I missed. More work isn't a good thing, but I think it's worse for me than you."

"Ouch." The look on the glassed boy's face was sympathetic. "It must have been a really bad time for you to move, right at the start of term," he added.

_You have no idea._ "Yes, kinda."

"Still," the boy continued, "you get to say that you were nearish when that they killed that ENE."

And at that comment, Shinji's blood froze, the whole world shifting under his feet. His pupils dilated, and he could feel his heart begin to pound.

"It was really awesome, the way those four Engels took down the thing."

_Okay. He doesn't know. He's just mad. Why on earth would you want to be _anywhere _near a major attack? There was nothing awesome about that, at all. I mean, even if I hadn't been involved, I know a lot of people died. And the whole chromatic bomb, too. Those things are nasty. It's not a game or a film._ He took a slight step back, as marginally, almost imperceptibly, the girl leaned in.

"Of course, have you heard any of the rumours going around?"

Biting his lip, Shinji shook his head. "No. About what?"

The other two looked at each other. "Oh, nothing really," said the boy. He adjusted his glasses. "Just that there was some kind of proto-Engel involved in the battle."

"I... I hadn't heard that," said Shinji. "What does that mean, um, anyway? Wouldn't a proto-Engel just be an Engel?" He could _feel_ the sweat on his forehead, and hoped that they wouldn't notice it.

"Maybe, maybe." The boy shrugged.

"I guess, it is only a rumour," added the girl. "I don't know. My friend... he's normally pretty good at these sort of things."

"Is he?" said Shinji, who was currently trying to look for a way out of the conversation without looking like he was trying to look for a way out, and failing at both objectives.

"Oh, yes, he is." There was an undeniable smirk on the girl's face, as she added, "Yes, Eva's pretty good."

"Really?" It was almost a squeak.

"I don't suppose you know Eva, do you?"

_Calm down, calm down, calm down,_ Shinji thought to himself, with acute mental urgency. _They haven't said anything which couldn't be just me being paranoid. And I'm just giving myself away if I do anything silly like this. So I'll just deny everything._ He mentally paused. _I'll just deny anything which isn't directed towards me in a negative form to make me use a double negative, and thus confirm it,_ he corrected himself, both of his foster sisters being a little too fond of that piece of linguistic trickery. He took a breath.

"I don't, sorry," he said, managing to hold his voice a lot more level, as he motioned to leave, "Now, if you'll be excusing me?"

"Is it true that you're the pilot of that mecha?" blurted out the boy, as Shinji began to walk away. Besides him, the girl frowned.

Shinji breathed out slowly. This, he could handle. "What mecha?" he asked, confusion layered into his voice.

"The one I mentioned."

Shinji sighed (perhaps a little too heavily). "Don't be silly. What kind of _idiot_ would put a sixteen-year old in a mecha?"

"Arcanotech War One China," the brown-haired boy promptly answered.

"For one," Shinji continued, ignoring the comment "wouldn't it be illegal? I'm not some super secret spy officer person." He let a mass of restrained vitriol seep into his voice. "I get enough trouble because of who my father is, without that kind of stupidness." And with that said, he stomped off. Inwardly, he was shaking. Tomorrow... he'd really need to talk to that person who'd talked to him about cover stories and the like during the training session. At least he hadn't done anything stupid like admit it, right?

Kensuke and Taly watched him go. "Why the hell would you ask something like that?" Taly asked the boy, frustration in her voice. "It's obvious that they wouldn't have him as the pilot. As he said, he's sixteen." She paused. "Mind you, it did help. We know, now, that he's the son of Representative Ikari."

"So it was a good idea then," Kensuke said, in a slightly hurt tone of voice.

"No, it wasn't. But... yeah, that makes sense. He obviously knows something about it, and, so, obviously, his dad must have told him about it, maybe even shown him it." There was a pause, and then Taly let out a muffled squeal. "That that means that the Proto-Engel is reeee~eeeaaaal!"

"I know!" Kensuke was fighting to keep a straight face, and loosing, despite the odd looks that they were getting.

"So awesome!"

"Yes!"

Kensuke managed to last almost ten seconds, before he started to giggle out of sheer elation, hands clutched together against his chest. He even permitted himself a little twirl, before coming to a stop, and noticing a pair of rather confused-looking red (and male) eyes locked on him.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Breath coming quickly, maniac grin split over his face, Kensuke glanced at his friend. "Oh... oh wow."

"Do you have a date or something? You're acting like my sister on a sugar rush." The other boy paused. "More than usual, I mean."

"Oh... better than that. Better, better... no, awesome! Much more awesome." Kensuke shook his head. "You won't believe what I just found out, Toja..."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The hospital room was bright and as cheerful as a place which people only went to because there was something seriously wrong with them could be. Compared to the deathly cold, clinical feel of the high security hospital down in the Geocity, this was a much more human place, built to a human scale, and lacking the subtle shift in architecture which came from a deliberate decision to ensure that there were no sharp angles or areas of deep shadow anywhere. In fact, there were even fresh flowers scattered around the place; the genetically engineered, hot-house-grown blooms blue and white and green, as well as more conventional colours. Some of them looked very fresh, in fact.

"I don't recognise those ones," Toja said, pointing at the plants on the bedside table.

"Hrmm?" Kany twisted her head. "Oh, a bunch of my friends gave me them yesterday. They all came in after school." She frowned. "Uh... the red ones are from Hikara, the white-and-blue spotted ones are from Imi, the orange ones are from Mary... uh, and I can't remember the others." She smiled, a little dreamily. "They're pretty. I like them."

They may have been pretty, but this did little to reassure Toja, as he sat beside his sister's bed, feeling his nails dig into his balled fists. The rhythmic bleeping of the machinery around her, monitoring her post-operation condition, and the mass of cables and fibres which cocooned her within the transparent, sterile cylinder, were a sign that she still in a poor condition; stable, yes, but not well. He wanted to reach out, stroke her hair (cut short, and sealed in a bluish gelcast) and her sweat-covered brow, reassure her and tell her that it is, was, and always will be okay, but he couldn't.

He was trapped here almost as much as she was, feeling useless, unable to do anything... anything at all, to make her feel better. There may have been plenty of doctors and nurses who were responsible for her care, but he was her brother, and he should have been looking over her, keeping her safe, like his father had told him to.

He certainly shouldn't have been the one who was responsible for her getting hurt. An idiot who'd pulled her from safety into the path of a falling piece of ceiling, because he thought that she wasn't safe where she was.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He dragged his attention back to the conversation. It wasn't exactly progressing quickly, because Kany was still exhausted, and on painkillers to negate the discomfort as the medichines flooding her bloodstream knitted the cloned, transplanted flesh and nerves into her body. He wasn't exactly the most attentive brother, either, for obvious reasons.

"What?" he asked. "I'm sorry, I just... sorry, I wasn't... I was distracted."

"I _said_," a hint of her normal fire returning, "you did get my MP," an abbreviation for _manuprokedi_, the Nazzadi word for a Personal CPU, "from home, right?"

Toja blinked, and patted his pockets. "Yeah," eventually finding it in the top one. "It wasn't in your room, it was on the side downstairs," he said, as he pulled out the paper-thin, bright pink when in opaque mode. He paused. "Um... how am I meant to give it to you?" he asked, which was, all in all, a pretty sensible question, given that she was still encased in the bubble.

"Put it in the in thing," she said, fingers tapping the side of the tube, where a black box connected onto the transparent side. "They've got all kind of stuff which means stuff can come in and out of this thing inside that thing."

Toja squinted at the sterilisation input, as the thing was marked, taking note of the "Warning! Strong Source of Ultraviolet Radiation!" on the side, and the attendant list of things you weren't meant to put in. "Uh, Kany?"

"Muh huh?" she mumbled, eyes already starting to droop again.

"I can't put a thinscreen MP in. It says so."

"Oh." A moment's thought. "Give me your one, then."

"What?"

"Come oo~oon, Toja" she moaned. "I'm bored in here, and I don't want to use the hospital ones, 'cause they don't let you load your own LAI up. And, anyway, _Dedaka_ told them I wasn't allowed to use one without Aly to supervise me, and she's loaded up onto my MP. Which totally isn't fair at all."

Her brother said nothing about the little bit of biological curiosity on... well, not where babies came from, but how they got in there in the first place, which had led to their father imposing that rule on his nine-year old sister.

"So... come on, and give me your casescreen!"

Toja hesitated. "But I need it for school, and yours is pink," he said, weakly, already pulling out his own, to transfer the memory-unit between the two.

"Pink is the best colour there is!"

"Yeah, and you're a girl. Of course you like..." he trailed off, as he saw the mischievous grin on her face. "Oh." His shoulders slumped. "How come I'm the one being outsmarted, when you're the one who's ill?" he asked, in a mock aggrieved tone of voice.

"'Cause you're not too bright, remember," Kany said, with a weak grin. "And because I'm the one in the tube, and you're my brother, yoo~oou have to be nice to me, until I'm better," she pointed out, triumphantly; a triumph somewhat interrupted by a yawn. "And then afterwards, and forever," she added. "'Cause it's your job."

The boy winced. She said she had forgiven him for what had happened, but he couldn't believe that he really was off free, like that. It wouldn't be right. It was _his_ fault, and so he was going to do everything he could to make it up to her. And if it took having to use a pink MP for the next few days... he would do it. With pride. Even if it wasn't enough.

"... cheer up, Toja," Kany said, breaking him from his thoughts.

He shook his head slowly. "You shouldn't be telling me to cheer up. I should be the one who's making things better for you, you know."

Her shoulders bunched, in a sort of pseudo-shrug. "They'll be letting me out of this thing soon, right?"

Her brother swallowed. "Umph... yeah. Probably at the weekend, the nurse said."

"I know that. What I was trying to say is that it'll be better then, right?"

No. It wouldn't be better. That was the thing that Toja knew, and which his sister wasn't really, properly, intellectually aware of. People who hadn't looked into it, hadn't been forced to be aware of the limited nature of such repairs, tended to assume that it was some kind of magic, which allowed you to get instantly over any injury. And, yes, technically, arcanotheraputic procedures may have been used to ease the healing process, and from a historical perspective, they may have been technically magic, but that didn't mean that some doctor could just snap their fingers, and make it all better. Toja knew that his sister was looking forwards, to use the phrase in a bitterly ironic sense, to several months of physiotherapy, before she could walk properly again. Several long, painful, months of trying to regain something that she had once taken trivially.

All his fault.

Except... no, it really wasn't. It wasn't his fault. Because that was the thing that he hadn't mentioned to Kensuke, or that _nazzadi kivilitexcedivity_ his friend spent too much time around. The official story, that it had been Engels which had taken down the thing that they were calling Harbinger-3, was a lie. Or, at the very least, it wasn't the absolute truth. Because there had been something else involved. Something _big_.

He had seen it when they were getting people out of the ruined bunker. Normally, they wouldn't have done this, and the occupants could have just gone back to the Victoria Arcology, which was where they had been before the incident, but... well, after the arcanochromatic warhead, his home arcology hadn't been in a state where they were going to let people back in, until they had checked for structural integrity. But, as the mass of people, filter masks on, flowed like ants from a crushed nest into the transports, he had seen the bulk of _something_ humanoid, the construction vehicles and mecha swarming around it merely giving a scale to the thing. And it had terrified him; it had radiated, even fallen, an air of the Other. He couldn't describe anything which gave the impression. In fact, Toja suspected that, had he merely been looking at a picture, he would have been able to dismiss it.

But he hadn't been looking at a picture. And he couldn't dismiss it. No matter how much he wanted to. No matter how much the psychologist, in those mandatory post-traumatic stress evaluations, talked to him. No matter how much the people from the NEG, who had gone around to all the people who had been in the bunker, to offer their condolences, and mention how such a thing merely showed the danger of a Harbinger-level entity, would have preferred it.

That wasn't where the feeling came from, though, this certainty that the thing had been what had crushed the bunker, as it fought with Harbinger-3. The feeling came from the nightmares. That vast, vaguely-demonic face, looming from the shadows; a thing of terror, fear and pain, locked in embrace with a dark shape. It was near. It was close. It was hunting him, and the only way to escape was to wake soaked in sweat.

Toja knew, he just _knew_ that this proto-Engel, this "Eva", was the massive _thing_.

And he now knew that the new transfer student knew something about it.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**Wednesday, 22nd of September, 2091**

Print-out in hand, Ritsuko strode into the control room. Her harcontacts were alight, and her eyes was filled with phantom images and glowing wireframes, a world of augmented technological illusions which she spent more time in than not.

"Who's down in the Immersion chamber right now?" she asked the duty officer. Technically, she could have pulled up the information, but it was, actually just faster to ask the person whose job it was to know when they were right there.

"Uh... that would be Sary," the Arabic woman said, with only a moment's hesitation.

"Good enough," Ritsuko said, after a moment's thought, as she sat down at one of the control consoles, bringing up her log-in. "Sary, I'm sending over a burst which Herkunft sent us over the high priority q-encrypted line. UNITY has got several hits for a potential Pattern Blue. Nothing precise, but it looks enough that I'm moving us up an alert level. I want you to flip to Melichor, and get me a Del-Sigma on it."

"Understood, Dr Akagi," the civilian Operator said, her voice slightly distorted.

"Should I send out a recall for Major Katsuragi?" asked Lieutenant Aoba. "It's not high enough to be automatic, but she's in a meeting up at EuroHighCom, and then she has to liaise with Project Moneta, and, well, if it is genuine..."

Captain Bakr frowned. "What do you think, Ritsuko?" she asked.

Internally, the blond sighed. The Captain was technically speaking proficient, but was really rather uncomfortable around anything which seemed to hint towards a Herald or Harbinger-level threat. She did score rather high for latent parapsychic sensitivity, after all, and Ritsuko suspected that it might be necessary to get her transferred to another position. She would almost certainly be happier there; certainly happier than she would be if she found out more than she should.

Ritsuko was fully aware of the subtle menace in that kind of statement. It was fully intentional.

"I don't feel it's necessary yet, Zakiyya," she said, sticking her hands in the pockets of her lab coat. "UNITY isn't the most precise detection grid, after all; it's too sensitive. Too many false positives for me to slavishly follow it. And should it turn out to be genuine... well, Misato can certainly do her job from the European High Command headquarters. It isn't as if we don't have a hotline to them, anyway."

Captain Bakr nodded. "Understood."

"Good. Now, about the..." Ritsuko paused, as a high urgency icon appeared in the upper right corner of her harcontacts. It was from Representative Ikari, currently... well, he'd probably be somewhere near Geneva right now, if she could remember his itinerary. "Excuse me," she said, raising two fingers to her right temple. "Start conversation," she told her muse, which opened the connection. There was a slight chiming noise, as the protocols synchronised, before the glassed, bearded face of Gendo Ikari appeared before her eyes, the static, voice-only identifying picture much more efficient than the bandwidth which a live video feed would consume.

"Dr Akagi." The man's voice was perfunctory, brief.

_As usual_, she thought. "Yes, Representative?"

"You have received the message from UNITY." It was not a question.

"Yes."

"It is genuine. Have the Third Child recalled to the Geocity, and prepared for launch in Unit 01; Rei should be on back-up, if it should prove necessary."

"Even without the successful synchronisation start?" she subvocalised, eyes flicking over the others. Oh, it would be so much easier to just be able to be able to think such things and transmit them as electronic signals, rather than relying upon a throat mike, but such things were much harder than the science fiction she had read in her youth would have one believe. As she had found out, when she had learned more about biology and computers alike. That wasn't to say that it wasn't possible, but she wasn't wired up like a full Magi Operator would be. The complexity required to be able to think, and have a machine respond to your thoughts with true precision was insane; just look at the problems with the Evangelions.

"Yes," the man said. "Be ready to launch at the request of the NEG, but do not volunteer before that. It will be necessary to see if they have learned the lesson that Asherah extracted from them in blood."

"Understood." She paused. "Is it from..." she didn't even dare to say the name.

"Among other sources, yes." The words were level. "Ikari out."

The icon disappeared, and Ritsuko blinked a few times, the blue lights of her harcontacts shining out through her eyelids. "Change of plans," she said, to the obvious curiosity of the duty officer. "Tell Misato she's needed, and get both of the Children down to the Eva bays. That was the Representative; he believes that this has a good chance of being genuine, after the incident last week. He wants us prepared and completely ready."

"Both the First and Third Child are currently at school... it's Wednesday today, so they'll be coming down at 14:00 for training anyway. We could..." began Makota, before Ritsuko interrupted, a slightly weary note in her voice.

"No. I said to recall them now. But," she paused, "only on Protocol B. No need to go on an E, like last time." Ritsuko was still more than a little irritated that such an emergency had turned out to be... not a false alarm, because it had been _something_, but there had been no contact with whatever it had been.

Oh well. At least the incident hadn't had any lasting consequences.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The fist collided with Shinji's face with a solid, meaty 'thwack', and the boy fell back onto the ground, one hand already instinctively clutching for his nose. From the too warm feeling within it, he already suspected he had a nose-bleed. Shaking his head, to shake away the slight sway in the world around him, his eyes skipped over the bluish-grey floor, the streaks of shoe scuff-marks marring it, the white walls and their attendant image boards, the sparse scattering of other students on the way to lunch, and the heterogeneous mix of faces all looking at the scene. The light streaming in through the windows, from the glow strips that marked the top of the arcology dome, seemed really bright, oversaturated, drawing his attention to every little detail.

Oh, and the tall, black-skinned, red-eyed boy looming over him, _Wow, he really was even taller from down here_, chisel-like teeth slightly bared. That was a rather important detail in the tableau.

"Let me put it to you again. You know that giant robot, that Engel-thing," growled the boy, leaning forwards as he massaged his fist. "My sister's in hospital, going to have to learn to walk again because of that _thing_, so you..."

"It wasn't my fault!" Shinji blurted out, to a sudden susurration from the surrounding students

The other boy blinked. "What?"

"Do you think I wanted to be in that thing?" Shinji snapped, his voice nasal and muffled by the hand clamped to his nose. His PCPU chimed, but he ignored it.

The gears could be seen to be turning in the other boy's mind, slotting this new information into place, as Shinji suddenly realised, with a sinking feeling, that he had just done something very, very wrong. Both in the short term, in that he was going to be beaten up by a bigger, stronger, taller, and generally 'er'er (_stupider_, he thought with a hint of malevolence, because he realised that he could put context to the face, as one of his classmates), but well, how should he put it?

Some people were going to be a little irate that he had let that slip.

_... oh dear._

"Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait," said a shorter boy, arglasses lit up. "Are you seriously telling me that you're the pilot of the proto-Engel!"

"Not now, Kensuke," growled the _nazzada_, grinding his teeth together. "I swear..."

Shinji didn't like the look on either of their faces. One might have been contorted with rage, but the other was a little too intent, and too interested for it to be really healthy. "N-n-no," he managed. "I'm n-not saying that."

Bending down, the taller boy thrust his face down. "What did you say?" The growl in his voice was gone; now there was just suddenly an ice-cold anger. "Because I don't think you're telling the truth. I think you just admitted that you're the reason my sister's in hospital!"

The chattering around them was louder; in fact, the people around them seemed to be forming a circle. Shinji had just about enough time to bemoan the fact that apparently, there was not one decent person among his schoolmates who would stop a poor, innocent person like him from being beaten up like this, before he saw the first which had already had one impact with his face draw back again.

Everything seemed to slow down. Newly born instincts, from all those training drills they had put him through, emerged. It was very simple. He just had to move his arms like _this_ and _this_, and then _aim_ the targeting reticule at the sensory organs and _activate_ the lasers and... and realise that all that had been in the Evangelion-Thinking-Mode, not the Actual-Body-Thinking-Mode, and then get punched in the face because he barely even moved his arms at all, because, as it turned out, the other boy was quite a lot faster than he was.

And now his right cheekbone was hurting quite a lot. At least the other boy was massaging his hand such that it suggested that he really didn't know how to throw a punch properly, which, even through the pain, gave a spike of satisfaction to Shinji. Even if it was taking the idea of taking his victories where he could get them a _little_ far, he thought, as he closed his eyes, and tried not to start screaming or crying or anything.

"Owww. Ngh. Nhgh," Shinji just about managed, as he worked his jaw, before he realised that suddenly everything had gone quiet. And the reason it had gone quiet is that one of the cleaning staff was pinning the tall Nazzadi boy to the wall, in a decidedly professional hold. And another one had a gun pointed at the trapped boy. And more seemed to be forming a cordon.

And stood, just behind the men and woman in blue, was Rei Ayanami, her white hair and grey eyes and snow-like skin a stark contrast to the regulation black overcoat. That look in her eyes, one of them still covered by a protective lens; it wasn't clinical, it wasn't even cold, as that would imply a detached observation of the scene. It was something, somehow, somewhat _dead_. No emotional investment at all.

Shinji shivered, as he was helped up, the adrenaline flooding his system leaving him shaking. Looking around, there were shocked faces of students, staring at him, and a faint buzz of conversation. But only a faint one. The people in blue overalls separating them, stun batons out, were enough to cower even the most privileged schoolchild here. One did not argue with people like that, especially when they seemed to be setting up a cordon. There was, in fact, an instinctual assumption among those children born in the Strange Aeon that the government, fundamentally, did know best, because while overparanoid vigilance was annoying, laxity was lethal.

The scars of the last forty years lay deep in the social psyche.

"Here. You'll want this," said a blue-clad woman, handing him a cloth. Licking his upper lip, Shinji could taste the blood, and, somewhat wearily, folded it up to staunch the flow, a sudden sense of _déjà vu_ sweeping him.

"DNA checks human, no Outsider taint or trace of Hybridisation beyond tolerated gene-pool levels," reported another member of the 'cleaning staff', stepping away from where Toja was still pinned to the wall.

"Good. Have we sealed off this corridor?"

"Affirmative. All witnesses have been isolated."

"Acknowledged." The woman sighed. "Right, we're going to have to do the whole 'John' scenario. Take," she nodded her head towards Toja, "_that one_ off for more detailed examination. The rest are going to have to debriefed." She paused. "Is Theatre 1 free?"

A man shook his head, after checking his PCPU. "No. One of the drama clubs is in there."

"Well, that counts as free by my standards. I think this is a little bit more important than a play, don't you?" the woman said, a caustic note in her voice, as she glanced sideways towards Shinji. "God, no security incidents for over three years, and two in less than a week," he heard her mutter, as her co-workers began to herd the other children away.

_Well... there goes any hope of normalcy,_ went his distracted thoughts. _Now that all this... argh, my nose hurts. And my cheek. How on earth did they find this out? Bah._

"We are needed down in the Geocity," said a soft voice. Blinking, Shinji turned to stare at the Rei Ayanami, the only student left in the corridor. "There has been a recall, at the B-level of urgency."

"I thought we weren't meant to go for... the thing... until two?" he said, still muffled by the blood-soaked cloth.

"No." No anger, no frustration in her voice; just a mechanical recitation of the facts. "There has been a recall. There was a message sent to you three minutes and thirteen seconds ago. It was high priority."

"... what?" Shinji fumbled around in his pocket with his free hand, now acutely aware of how his cheek ached. He was sure that he had a bruise; he could just feel that hot bruise-feeling, only made worse when he talked. And that was the problem with soft-screen PCPUs, the ones which kept the entire thing flexible, compared to the technically-old-fashioned ones with a hard casing. It was much harder to remember which pocket it was in.

"That was the time at which I received it," she added.

Checking it, he could see that she was right about the recall. Pulling the cloth clamped to his nose away gingerly, he immediately returned it to place, as he felt a trickle resume. With a sigh, he shook his head. "Okay." He paused. "So... uh, um, we're going to the station then?"

"No. You will go with the security personnel, to receive treatment for your nasal haemorrhage and the minor hematoma of the tissue of your facial epidermis. They will then escort you to the Geocity, as per their orders. I will go on ahead." And with that said, she turned on her heel, and strode down the corridor, heading towards the exit.

"I..." Shinji trailed off. _I don't understand what you're saying. Please, use shorter words,_ was what he wanted to say, but that would make him look a bit stupid, and anyway she was already far enough away that... _Never mind. I... I think she was talking about a nosebleed and a bruise, from context, but... um_ "Is a hematoma a serious thing?" he asked the 'cleaner' beside him, who seemed to be in charge.

"I... actually don't know," she admitted.

"It's a bruise," interjected another one of the escorts, and Shinji relaxed somewhat. And felt slightly smug that he had, in fact, been correct.

"But we will be taking you to Medical, before we go down to the Geocity." She paused. "How are you feeling?" she asked, as they began to move. "You don't appear to have any major injuries, but...

"A-a little shaken up," Shinji admitted, adding, "Oh, and my nose is still bleeding."

One of the men trailing them sighed. "We have to clean these floors. Please don't bleed over them."

He was silenced with a glare from his superior.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

How much of what a human being sees is true? How closely does the perception of the world within our heads correlate with what exists externally? Is there, in fact, an external reality; is life nought but a dream and all the other entities we believe we perceive are but dancing puppets? And if one were to continue the metaphor, that line of speculation, who would be the puppetmasters? Some part of the self who the conscious being is not aware of; a part who a sceptic might point out resembles an empirical, external reality? Some demiurge; a god that lies to all senses in the name of power? Who knew?

Well, quite a lot of beings knew more than humanity, for one. And, indeed, many of the arguments were rooted in the human mode of thought. What would the idea that all other minds could be an illusion be to a species which could connect to any of its kin with a thought, for example? Indeed, such a species would probably view all others as non-sapient, a strong xenophobia linked to their internal unity. But such an argument was an irrelevancy to the subject at hand.

This place was dark. This place was not dark. Such a term was not truly defined here, because the human perception of the qualia of light (and the corresponding absence which men had called 'dark') was based on electromagnetic radiation, and if one were to take the density of photons over this higher dimensional space, it would be negligible, restrained to an infinitesimal hyperplane in a low r-state environment. Almost a rounding error. The greater beings here 'saw' by gravitation, Sol a source of illumination just as it was for those who relied on electromagnetism.

If one were to render this space in three dimensions, and in human sensory impressions, merely to get a glimpse of its immensity, then all the spatial dimensions familiar to _Homo sapiens_ could be rendered as a mere line, and the unseen higher dimensions into merely two. And, then, protruding out from this line would be gleaming, twisted spires of metal and flesh, twisting and turning, bloated and cancerous; a jagged mess. A few, higher r-state photons, drawing a curved world-line which gave them a non-zero curvature in this space, illuminated these spires in green and purple and yellow; sometimes they tore through these structures, twisting them further as the bloated cancer warped to account for the damage. With closer examination, smaller, matt-black blots moved between the twisted spires; these things showed conscious control and awareness, compared to the mute towers, but they were so small, so tiny by comparison to the vast biomechanical fronds which shadowed over them.

But these were just background, to the main constructs. If the smaller protrusions from the three-dimensions-which-are-one were spires, then these things were mountains. Heaving, amorphous, _things_ which go beyond the ability of this weak metaphor to explain; fungi-like mountains which sprouted forth from the world to spread themselves far away above the line, where the limits of the low r-state did not constrain them so. They waited. Unmoving. Sleeping. Dead? No, not really, but quiescent, certainly.

One could zoom out further, from this viewpoint from under the canopies of the mountains, until the spires became figures, and then became blades of grass, finally receding to silvery fuzz, and one would not have yet broken the immensity of the canopy of mountains. To the beings here, gravitation cast a dim light now, attenuated by distance, and those few higher r-state photons were long forgotten. They relied on other, stranger particles, which mankind merely clumps together under the broad auspices of Arcane Theory, to "see". Things basked and swam and flew and crawled in this terrible space, completely detached from, and uncaring of, the affairs of man. 'Plants', the autotrophs which existed in any ecosystem, sat (Flew? Floated?) passively, absorbing energy, while things preyed upon them, and upon each other. Creatures akin to fish swam through denser areas of spacetime fluid; while 'birds' flew and squirmed and wriggled where space was thinner. Cultures bloomed and blossomed and died, knowing this as their world; just as native to them as what mankind knows. The songs of unknown beings, expressed through resonance and frequency of spacetime itself, reverberated through the spaces.

They sang of their terror and fear. They could feel what was happening, and the shifts which were occurring in their ecosystem. To them, this was not altogether unlike the distress that a saurid might have felt upon the sight of a very bright light in the west, at dawn. They could not escape outwards, because they had adapted to dwell around the shallows of this ink-dark void, relatively close to a world-line, and deep in the depths of this cosmic universe, they would be shredded by forces which they could not control. Though they did not call it that, they could feel Leng, and its existence close to them, and they could feel that which sleeps around Sol. There was a vast migration beyond anything which has ever been seen on Earth occurring, flocking away from the gravitational "light" of Sol, trying to go somewhere, anywhere, to get away from what it coming.

And then one broke the boundary-ceiling of the mountains, and suddenly, terribly, the perspective shifted. The mountains that sprouted forth from the line did not do so. They were not growing from the line, which was the entire world which mankind intuitively knows. It was a ridiculous idea, anyway. That such a being could grow from such a limited set of dimensions, so tiny and meaningless in the immensity of this void; preposterous.

They were not growing from the world. They were reaching out, to touch it.

One new one reached out with an appendage, to that distant line, and its vast, coalesced bulk followed it, compressing into the harsh environment of this low r-state environment.

It was being called.

It was time.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

There was always something slightly stuffy about this dome and others like it, Hikary had always felt. It didn't matter that the internal biosphere and environment was controlled, and entirely artificial. There was a dryness in the air, a certain smell that spoke of the ages contained within. It might have been the lack of children, she considered. Around her home, there was always a slight buzz; the sound of the inevitable sounds of life in a communal living area. But here, in a place like this, which really, if one was to be honest, existed as a place where the elderly waited to die, the noises of life were quietened. They were filled with examples of the indignities of age, reduced though they may have been over historical levels, and with the odd dialects of pre-Reformation English common, it was no wonder that they were frequent settings for horror films. Too frequently, the citizens merely retreated to the comfort of the Grid, spending their time where they didn't have to deal with the realities of the Aeon War (as, after all, the elder generations had more problems with such things; to them, sorcery was still something unnatural, rather than an everyday part of society).

Places such as this existed to fulfil a demographic problem. The simple fact was, the First Arcanotech War, when the Nazzadi (including her father, created as a child in a vat somewhere in the Oort Cloud) had launched their misinformed attempt at conquest, had killed almost half the human global population. It had not been decimated. Decimation would have been a blessing; to only lose one in ten would have been a mercy. Over eight billion humans had been alive in 2059; less than five billion had seen the end of the war, in 2065. With those kinds of casualties, there was a demographic cliff-face, where the Gaussian which the population would normally have been was skewed heavily towards the youthful end of things. And those who were already elderly had the second lowest survival rate; second to men and women in the 21 to 30 age bracket. Almost without exception, a person here would have lost family members, loved ones, children to the black-skinned, red-eyed cousins of _Homo sapiens_.

There was a very good reason that pure-Nazzadi children were rarely accepted onto this specific Social Work Programme. It had simply been found to be too distressing for them. _Amlati_ were somewhat less common, too (and most of them were from Integrationist families, like her, or raised by their human parent), and so would have been _sidoci_ had it not been that the white-skinned xenomixes were already not the best choice for this type of task.

Hikary personally doubted if there was a single resident here under the age of 80, which meant that they had been in their fifties at the time of the First War. The man she was visiting today was one of the eldest here; he was, as he frequently pointed out, almost 102. And almost none of them had living blood relatives. That was the reason for these visits, after all. It did the inhabitants good to meet people, to socialise with others outside their interactions on the Grid.

Checking the address on her PCPU again, she nodded to herself, and pressed the button for that particular flat. The intercom hummed, and she could hear the faint whine of a mobility exoskeleton, as the occupant answered.

"Yes? Hello? Who's there?"

Hikary cleared her throat. "It's me, Hikary, Mr Britton." She paused. "It's Wednesday afternoon, remember? I'm your assigned Visitor."

"Oh yes. Yes, yes. Come on in." The door light flicked green, and the girl let herself in, shaking her head fractionally. She honestly didn't understand why some of her classmates complained so much about this. Not only was it a vital, marked part of the ISCHAT (part of the Social Responsibility module), but it wasn't actually much hard work. It wasn't as if talking to a lonely old man for a few hours once a week was much of an effort (and usually taking him in his exoskeleton on a walk). But, then again, Hikary had decided long ago that, secretly, most of the children at the Academy were irredeemably privileged, and didn't understand the responsibility they owed to society from being born into such a position of wealth. That wasn't true for her. Her father had made sure that she and her sisters understood that well.

In another dome elsewhere barely under the upper reaches of the city, the shallowness speaking of the relative poverty, a cluster of students waited for the transfer to the final maglev to their destination. They were already in the boiler-suit garb which SWP 'volunteers' wore for messier assignments, and they stood out.

"Gatestown: 5 minutes," read Beatriu, softly. "Now... is that the one we want?"

"No," Reyokhy said, squinting slightly, as she also stared at the display board. "It's Sameki we want, remember. So we want the First Circle line." She paused, waving her finger in the air. "Yes, we want Anti-Clockwise."

"Are you sure?" asked Ferdina, leaning in.

He received a glare from a pair of violet eyes for that question. "Yes."

The boy shrugged. "Just checking." He (an _amlati_ from an Culturalist family; technically he was Ferdinand, but didn't like being called that) turned his head. "Heya, Taly, you're being quiet today. I mean, we do have Sasaky with us, so we need to keep the," he gave a self-indulgent chuckle, "levels of banter up."

"Huh?" Sasaky looked up from her _manuprokedi_. Well, not that much up; she was still the tallest of the group, but at least her attention was now focussed on her classmates.

Reyokhy shook her head. "Nothing, Sasaky. Go back to looking at your _kayawojy stefy_."

"Anyway," Ferda continued, "yeah, what's up?"

Taly shook her head, but even the manner in which she flicked a red-dyed lock of hair back was distracted. "Nothing. I'm fine."

There was a silence, although, to an outside observer, the noise of the platform, as people filed on to and off from a train, made such a thing unnoticeable.

"More... problems with your step-mum?" Beatriu asked, hesitantly.

"No. Not that. She's still a _sanginoy harangy_," the girl hastened to add,"... but, no, I'll be fine."

There were glances between the others. She certainly wasn't acting fine.

There was a snort from Sasaky.

"Hmm?"

"Oh," the girl said, her voice slightly husky, "a message from Jony."

A pause. "And it was?"

"Mostly complaining. The Cadets have them studying murder scenes. She's getting annoyed by Dathan. As usual."

"I don't like him," Ferdina said, with narrowed eyes. "He's... more than a little crazy. I was actually sort of interested in the OIS Cadets, but, spending more time around him? When he managed to get to be Cadet Leader. Bleargh."

"Well, he's fairly cute," Reyokhy said, raising one eyebrow.

Ferdina shook his head, a faint sneer on his face. "Not my sort." The sneer turned into a smirk. "Plus, I think Jony has first claim on him, anyway."

"Yeah." Reyokhy sighed. "I'll never get a chance. They should just admit that they're going out to themselves, so then they can then break up properly, and the rest of us can have a go."

"And you have poor taste, if you like him."

"Says you, Mr Floppy Eyes Over..."

"_Ua, uy, mandatmutati, dy aprecy_," Taly eventually intervened, flapping a hand in their direction. "I think the train's coming."

Indeed it was. And as they filed onto it, to get to the maintenance area, for their Social Work Programme placement with Arcology Maintenance, Taly felt that, personally, she could be excused a little bit of distractedness. Not because she happened to be not looking forwards to this (and she wasn't; she didn't exactly have the sort of influential parent who could ensure that she got onto the easiest SWP, and she wasn't thinking any names, especially not a certain daughter of the Ashcroft Advisor on the L2 Board of Education), but because, well, she had been distracted ever since the revelation that one of her classmates was involved in a really, really, _really_ awesome NEG weapons project. The Proto-Engel was real. Really real. The talk from the security people had made it very clear that they couldn't mention it to anyone at all, and faced criminal charges if they did, which meant that it really was real. And, sure, it was a shame what had happened to Toja, but, well, he was an idiot. In fact, if there hadn't been the security personnel, she might have stepped in, because, well, the new boy was basically a hero, and so she was duty-bound to help him.

And the fact that she might get to see that "Eva", if she helped him, was only an added bonus. A very, very large one.

Feet pounding against the floor, Toja sprinted down the undersized corridors of the primary school, past water fountains which only reached up to knee height and lockers which seemed far too low. He was still shaken. Very, very shaken. Although his underwear remained clean, it had been a close one at several points, in that 'little chat' which the security at the Academy had with him. If one defined a 'little chat' as involving bloodwork, a full NAS examination, and then, once they had checked properly on his mortal and non-Blanked status, the actual talk about not ever doing it again, and a full list of all the nasty things which could happen to him if he talked about it.

He was now quite aware, now that his brain was working again outside the heat of the moment, that he had punched the pilot of a capital-grade war machine. One which had been deployed against the Harbinger, and had seen active use. That... that was scary. That was like punching a naval captain, or something. He didn't ever, ever want to have to go through a talk like that again. Ever. They had even been dropping dark hints of getting the OIS involved, on possible extranormal influence grounds. He had been taken there just after midday. It was almost three now; there had been hours of questioning. He was very, very late; he was meant to be here, at the school, at two. He'd been so scared, that he hadn't even asked for some kind of form to explain why he was late. And... well, to be honest and to move away from the terror of what had just happened here, he needed the easy marks here, picked up from helping out here at Wade Primary as part of his Social Work Programme. It gave him a safety margin for other, harder exams. It was why he didn't mind it when the Class Rep, Hikary went on her little "social-conscience" talks. The SWP was easy, and you probably had to try to fail to actually fail. As long as you showed up and, in his case, spent the afternoon helping out with primary-school aged children, you basically got full marks for the module.

Although, he _would_ quite like to find out just who had decided that he was going to be assigned his little sister's class, for the duration when she was still in hospital. The last few weeks, he'd spent a lot of time answering questions about her, which hadn't been too enjoyable, especially when she was stuck in the waiting list, just due to how many people had been hurt, and needed transplants, after the Harbinger-3 incident. He hadn't been able to say anything good, and her friends had got distressed when he said nothing at all.

Pausing for a moment to get his breath back, he adjusted the too-tight neck of his uniform overcoat (one of the things they insisted was that the student be in proper uniform, which Toja found aggravating), and took a deep breath. It was hotter up here on the surface. Sure, the buildings were still sealed, but this school, unlike the Academy deep underground, had actual, real sunlight coming in through the windows (a legacy of 2080s design choices, from politicians concerned that some young children were growing up without ever seeing the sun), and so it got hotter, especially in the early autumn sunshine outside. Slowly, he opened the door, hoping in futility to look like he had been there all along, waiting for someone to notice his presence.

All in all, it would probably have worked better if he hadn't been an hour late, almost to the minute. And, in fact, he had not missed the first afternoon class, and arrived during registration for the second.

"Christine Mnemina."

A little girl with platinum blond, almost white, hair raised her hand. "Here."

"Napa Nabusakoraki."

"Hee~eere," droned a boy, slumped forwards on his desk.

"Imi..." the teacher noticed the interruption, and turned to stare at Toja; the older man making a tutting noise. "Ah, Mr Suzuhari. So nice of you to show up." There was a titter from the mass of nine-and-ten-year olds, who were, on the whole, at the age when sarcasm reigns from its rightful pedestal as the highest form of wit. The teenager spared a glance at them; to him, the ethnically and racially heterogeneous mass merely blended into grey-blazered homogeneity. Man, he'd really hated that uniform, back when he had to wear it. It'd been even worse than the one from the Academy, because at least with this one, they accepted that you could just take off the overcoat if it was too hot. They'd made you wear the blazer _all_ the time.

Toja winced. "Sorry. I got, um, caught up at something at school." The hesitancy was noted.

"... caught. Up. At. Something. At. School," the man said slowly, overtly making a note on his desk, to more laughter from the children. He flashed an insincere smile at Toja. "Well, don't worry. I'll be sure to explain this to the evaluators, and I'm sure they'll be really sympathetic."

"Sorry."

"Did you at least pick up the lesson plan?" the teacher asked, a hint of exasperation in his voice.

Toja nodded. "Yeah." He patted his pocket, where his-sister's-but-temporarily-his MP resided.

"Well, at least that's _something_. With that said, you'll be with the Bluebirds work group, rather than the Treefrogs, despite what it said." The man paused. "Now, where was I?"

"I am here," said a brown-haired girl, raising one thin hand.

"Oh, yes. Thank you, Imi," the man tapped his desk. "So... Joseph Ouramba."

"Here!"

And that was when the sirens started.  
"Today, at 15:02, a special state of authority has been declared by the New Earth Government. All students in the school are to head immediately to the designated secure bunker. Access to surface levels in London-2 is forbidden. Protective gear should be worn, as a precaution. Temporary martial law is in full effect."

_"Asisi radisi, ni plancki solilaki-kei pla laki-twi, soli Newi Earthi Governmenti canalabi absul homisapi. Absul nosesudevorazi ni nosesukasi serakausi mandatuchanposakausi velecuscipubuyuteri. Absul ui opuvami ot piwuteri oi arkologusufiki Londoni-twi. Mandatudohunakausi soli scipugaremeti delo absul scipunosesudevoraz. Vuli-oi-gurilutermi, delo estru radisi, serabi canalabi."_

The response was immediate. Even as the message was still playing, the hatches on the floor, under each desk, popped open, to reveal child-sized filter masks. These were not full ANaMNBC (arcane, nanological, micrological, nuclear, biological, and chemical) protection, but what they did do was filter the air, as well as providing a self-darkening facepiece which prevented blindness from the large number of high intensity lasers used in any modern combat. Even when only observing reflected light, it was still dangerous enough that the blink reflex was not enough to preserve retinal integrity; a situation made worse by the fact that both the NEG and the Migou designed their units so that, under the first layer of camouflage, was high reflectivity material (called 'mirrorgloss' by tank crews). At least with one of these worn, one would have to be in the approximate area of the laser's target to actually be hurt by it, which was widely agreed to be an improvement.

There was a buzz of commotion, as the class began to chatter, already reaching under their desks to the compartments.

The teacher passed one from behind the desk to Toja, who wordlessly accepted it. "Okay, everyone, be quiet, and listen to me," the man called out. "You should know how to put these on, but if you don't, _ask_! Me and..." he glanced sideways.

"Toja."  
"...Toja are going to check everyone, before we head off to the bunker. The straps need to be tight, and the memoform needs to have unfolded around the head properly. If you have any red lights on the internal surface, you are to show me, because that means it's not working properly, and you need a new one. That is not a good thing. You are to tell one of us. You aren't to just think that it will be okay. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Mr Rarinujeri," the class echoed.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Over blue sea and under blue sky, it came.

A vast, somewhat-ophidian, somewhat-cephalopodian, and utterly inhuman bulk swam through the air faster than the noise of its passage could propagate. Its carapace was the colour of a libation to gods unknown. Twitching tentacles trailed behind it, writhing and thrashing in disordered chaos, the faint crystalline glisten of the AT-Field sparkling on their surface, and finger-like, insectoid limbs pulsed and clutched on its underside. There were eyelike bulges on its broadened front; the harsh of their black and white quite unlike the wine-like colour of the rest of its body, but, like its bloated abdomen, these were far more akin to some cancerous bulge than an eye as a human (or, indeed, a serpent or a squid) might recognise it, for they were continuous with the flesh, and not a necessity for sight.

To think that it might need such a thing to detect electromagnetic radiation? Pathetic.

And, despite its supersonic velocity, there was all-pervasive hum in the air; a roaring crescendo of noise which made the jaw ache and eyes blur. Some might have compared it to the hum of power cables, or a horde of locusts, but if that was true, then this was an energy which could illuminate the heavens, a creature which could consume a planet. Below its bulk, the water danced along to this terrible sound, a thin mist effervescing forth from the water, twirling and swirling in the early autumn sun, only to be torn asunder as the shockwave it carried with it hit. Around it, lightning arced as the air molecules shredded by contact with its AT-Field discharged. The booms of thunder from the superheated air was far too similar to that of modern warfare.

"We have a hard lock on the target!" called out the Nazzadi officer on the sensor desk. "Data from the CATSEYEs matches the optical and radar image; no active ECM or ECCM detected."

"Approach vector calculated. First contact will be with Hotel Papa Tango Zero One Five One."

"Readings from the Shaws have been passed to Analysis. It's certainly a Herald at the very least; we're waiting to hear back from the MAGI on whether it's a Harbinger."

"Report: RALCL serum has been administered to 96.2% of front-line capital-weapon operational crew. Risk of Aeon War Syndrome should be correspondingly reduced for vital operational staff."

"Air units standing by, maintaining safe distance from Unidentified Hostile Target. ECM/ECCM birds are in the air."

"Satellites are no-go... I repeat, satellites are no-go. Migou orbital units are too close to risk detection of stealth observers. Communications are routed through ASIT birds."

"MCUs have been deployed across line of assault. Deployment of tactical arcanochromatic weapons can now proceed."

Slowly, all along the concentric lines of defence, the vast emplacements of capital-grade weapons emplacements ground around to face the target, megatonnes of armour designed to take a direct hit from a Migou Swarm Ship, and continue fighting moving with inertial bulk. On the vast map in EuroHighCom, icons indicating readiness to fire

"Phalanx 034 has target. Requesting fire authorisation." All around, the mechanical recitations of hussar-type LAIs, and the more concerned words of the humans in the control room, filled the area.

A blue ring of concentric circles appeared, the AR projection floating in mid air, facing the Command Triumverate. "Six Phalanxes have acquired the target. Their commanders are requesting fire authority."

Field Marshal Lehy narrowed her eyes. "No, THEMIS," she said, to the Total Information Tactical Analysis Network. Even if, technically, there wasn't a single entity to speak to; the TITAN LAIs were, as the name suggested, a network; a composite of tens of thousands thousands of lesser, focussed LAIs, each one dedicated to a specific task. What she was talking to was merely the end-user component, not dissimilar to that which a muse or a civilian drone. "Hold fire."

The inner three rings began to spin. "That is against standing orders. We are not to permit an entity..." the TITAN paused, the outer rings flashing yellow, "... positive confirmation has been received from the MAGI of the Ashcroft Foundation that this being can be classified as a Harbinger-class Herald. Assigning new designation: Harbinger-4. Assigning new codename: 'Eshmun'. All future references to this being are to utilise this designation."

Another voice from the LAI began to speak. "Requesting fire authorisation, as per Directive 07," stated the TITAN, this voice slightly deeper. "Standing orders are to prevent a Harbinger-grade threat from approaching an urban area. Due to the recognition of a Harbinger-grade threat, requesting a Triumverate confirmation on refusal to authorisation fire."

"Fire authorisation is not given. Authorise fire only on our orders," said Field Marshal Jameson; a decision supported by Admiral Tatuta.

"There is unanimity," said the TITAN, blandly. "Awaiting fire command." The voice shifted back to the higher pitched one. "The Ashcroft Foundation is requesting permission to deploy Evangelion Unit 01 at will, to support ground operations."

"Denied," said Jameson, his blue eyes cold. "They are aware of the plan, and they will stick to it."

"Response transmitted," said THEMIS, with the same passivity.

On the ground, the actual men and women in the stationary defence positions were not so calm. For one, their close ground support had not been deployed, after the horrific casualties inflicted by Asherah, so they were feeling more than a little nervous, if this thing was accompanied by anything smaller. There was also the issue of this thing's size.

Put quite simply, it was unfairly small and low emissions, by capital-ship standards. Not enough to mean that they couldn't target it, of course; that would be ridiculous. But this thing, barely frigate size, would, by precedent, be able to take a battleship-killing relativistic particle beam, and survive. And could kill a defence station with a single shot.

This was... distressing to the defence crews.

And still no authorisation came.

Down in the Geocity, ten kilometres below the surface of London-2, Major Misato Katsuragi was gripping onto the railing in front of her with whitened knuckles, the muscles in the back of her hand straining. All her instincts were telling her that they needed to get the Evangelion deployed as soon as possible, because the deployment chutes were a point of weakness in their strategy. What if the Harbinger could detect the characteristic magnetic fields of the rails as they propelled the Unit upwards? If it were in line of sight, the Eva would be exceptionally vulnerable. They'd seen the damage that Asherah had inflicted on the Unit, and there was no desire for the same to happen again.

She opened a window to the Evangelion. "How are you feeling?" she asked the boy. His face, wrapped in the armoured cowel of the plug suit, looked even more worried than she felt.

Shinji swallowed a gulp of LCL, and forced a fake smile onto his face. "Scared," he said. "It's... it's actually a real Harbinger, isn't it, Misato? Not like whatever it was last time? It's actually really real."

"All evidence suggests so," interjected Dr Akagi, the worry lines around her eyes creased up. Misato spared a glance at her friend. '_Yes'_ would probably have done, she thought.

"I'd... I'd say that the waiting was the worst part, but I'd be lying," Shinji continued. "The piloting and the fighting and the... and the," he winced, "the way it hurts are the worst."

"Don't worry. If things do go well, you won't be needed for more than the clean-up."

Misato thought that she could see that there was a little bit of a smile, at the corners of his mouth. "I think I'll just be a little bit worried, though," he said, a hint of self-mockery in his voice which sounded a lot more genuine than the forced smile before. Somehow, that cheered her up a bit. Yes, if things did go properly, this would be considerably less unpleasant than Harbinger-3. That one had been a complete surprise. This time, they had had warning, and knew better about how to deal with such things. Silently, she blessed Representative Ikari, and the slight edge of paranoia which had turned out not to be paranoia, which had led to them having everything in place for a Harbinger, properly this time.

_Mind you, it would be very hard for things to go as poorly as they did against Asherah_ she thought, a bitter smile directed inside. _At least this time we actually have a trained... well, semi-trained pilot available, and, as a bonus, Rei is unlikely to die if we _are _forced to put her in Unit 00 without a proper restart test._

She sincerely hoped that they didn't need to do that, though. That would be a sign that things had gone very, very wrong again.

Either way, it was time.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

If one could look into the mind of a being such as the one which the New Earth Government had chosen to call Eshmun, Harbinger-4, what would one find?

Raving, unintelligible, inchoate chaos, obviously. When the utter dissimilarity in evolutionary history, biology, soul-structure, r-state and indeed local physical laws which comprised the 'body' were taken into account, it was not exactly surprising that such a mind would be incomprehensible. The minds of the pathetic parapsychics of mankind would erode like a pile of sand in a hurricane, should they attempt to interface with such a soul-form, to access its mind.

But if one _could_, what would be there?

_The regimented beauty of the ordained  
__**Futile obstruction**__  
Necessities of the utter madnesses  
__**Things exist that I desire**__  
Of Those-Who-Are-Above All defy the  
__**Time for consumption**__  
Comprehension of all these tiresome toys. _

The great leviathan could feel how this place was unclean, feel the disgusting brush of the scintililating soul-forms of this entire ecosystems. Unnatural, impure, loathsome. A human may have compared it to wading through sterile sewage; it was not likely to be harmful, but still not pleasant.

_Do the dark waters of forgetting drown all?  
__**The void consumes all.**__  
Not I! Not I! Above the waves I raise  
__**Always, nothingness is being**__  
My banner high and sing greatly my triumph  
__**Inevitably true**__  
For I come to bring that which this world needs. _

It was heavy, bloated, gravid, laden with its eggs. It could feel what was nearby (though its sense of 'nearby' was rather different from a man's), and it knew that this was the optimal route to ensure its own survival, and that of its children. It was not a strong being, there were things which could prey on it, and in the time which was to come, it would need all the advantages it could get.

_A falling dying star! A broken shattered throne!  
__**Once respected ones**__  
__All things fade and die, for the Beast wills it.  
__**Foes and rivals, but worthy**__  
You do not understand, and you never shall,  
__**What filth remains now?**__  
For the world you thought you knew was never real. _

This place was sick. The shells of base metals it could feel around it, the ones which each had a tiny , warped radiance within them, which bent higher dimensions, were clean, pure, compared to the filthy, saponaceous and oleaginous things that brushed against it with every move it made. It would wipe this planet clean of the sickness.

Such a place was not _right_ to raise one's children.

_Pencilled pale figures dancing around  
__**Sterilise the land**__  
Faint grey shadows cast by crippled maimed hands.  
__**You shall not deny me this**__  
Puppets without strings, peasants without kings,  
__**I shall boil the sea.**__  
My children will make it so you never were. _

"Sir!" The woman's words were harsh. "THEMIS reports that all designated units now have direct line of sight to target Eshmun."

"Requesting permission to authorise fire," the TITAN said, the discs of its ARvatar motionless, as if its entire composite-self waited upon this decision. That was a lie, of course; that would be inefficient of it, a waste of its massive computing powers, quite apart from the fact that the majority of its sub-components were completely unsuited for human interaction.

Field Marshal Lehy glanced sideways at the other two members of the Triumverate, two silent nods enough. She grinned then, chisel-like teeth bared somewhat maliciously. "THEMIS, you are granted fire authorisation, as per Operation Xerxes."

"Understood, Field Marshal." The ARvatar vanished, as the map of the target zone expanded, to fill the entire floor, such that the officers stood on it like titans of old.

All along the front, the serried ranks of Type-S025 tubular artillery and Type-S033-A and S033-B missile launch vehicles received a pulsed signal, the hussar LAI systems aligning their trajectories along a very specific launch vector. Previously hidden files of orders and combat doctrines were unlocked, as the TITAN set up the attack. This would not have worked against the Migou, of course; they were a technological, sapient species, and thus carried out their operations with such high levels of infowar and ECM that such networking abilities were actively dangerous to use against them. But with a foe like this, who appeared to not even note the presence of the armoured vehicles and stationary positions around it, it could be used to the full of its capabilities. And they were mighty indeed.

The Harbinger was continuing along its path, now over the ruins of Old London. Below, the ground sparkled, a thin layer of gleaming dust covering every surface, the area covered in scrubbing micromachines. This proximity was not as alarming as it might have sounded; that dead metropolis did cover most of the South of England. And, indeed, the NEG had been loath to let such a thing get this near, but it had been decided that the naval forces stationed in the North Sea would not be sufficient to guarantee a kill, judging by the durability of Asherah, and should they fall, they would leave an invasion route open for the Migou, from occupied Scandinavia. Hence, it was up to the stationary positions to take down the foe.

The tactics had been derived from observations of Harbinger-3, as well as co-operation between the best and brightest of the military minds of the New Earth Government Army and Navy. Not only that, but the full abilities of the Achtzig Group's Total Information Tactical Analysis Networks had been utilised, the Limited Artificial Intelligences tasked with the analysis of all the contradictory information about them which could be extracted from mythology, and the results finally checked with the use of the MAGI supercomputers, in a full-immersion dive.

The tactics could be summarised as "Use A Gun. And If That Doesn't Work, Use More Gun".

The attack began with a thudding cascade. Carefully timed, the legions of artillery pieces and missile launchers opened up, the barrage working in from the furthest to the nearest, the attack calibrated such that there would be three discrete impacts of the mass of projectiles. Unknowing, uncaring, the Harbinger continued onwards, possible not even aware of the oncoming horde of projectiles, counting down the few seconds before they impacted.

And then, a quarter of a second before the first wave of arcanochromatic-warhead tipped missiles and shells (each one only a few tonnes of TNT each; the Colour-contamination was the main function of this attack, and keeping the yield-per-blast down prevented too-wide dispersal) impacted, the capital grade weaponry fired. Some had been aimed at a separate part of the Harbinger's anatomy by THEMIS, attempting to cripple it, while others were all aimed at a single point. The precision of the targeting was such that it had been necessary to account for signal transit time. The accuracy was, in fact, inhuman; the people operating the capital grade weaponry, buried behind layers of radiation shielding and thermal insulation were handlers for the LAIs which did the actual fire control. There remained manual, hard-wired restrictions on what the LAIs could do; they required the physical authorisation to fire, but even then, some were concerned by just how little individuals were involved in the firing of these colossal weapons.

But the effects were _glorious_.

The Harbinger, Eshmun, was enveloped in a Colour-tainted storm of plasma, the relativistic impacts of the stationary charge-beams collapsing the phase-space of its AT-Field, while the directed arcanomagnetically confined beams sheared straight through its unnatural flesh.

As the fireball expanded upwards and dimmed, a dark-shape in the blinding brightness slowly fell to pieces, the crystalline brightness of its AT-Field weak and broken, torn asunder by the tainted light and incredible energies thrown at it. Through magnification, they could see, even through the radiance, the colossal flesh splinter and fragment as it fell. The abdomen of the thing, if that was the correct term, was wrecked and scattered, globules of ichor-coated viscera pattering down to earth, bursting like rain in the heat. The larger, frontal section was more intact, though riddled with worm-like holes from the impacts, greying-craters torn out of the wine-coloured carapace. Wriggling and spasming, it slammed into the ground, tearing through rotting buildings with its bulk.

"Multiple direct impact have breached the AT-Field," stated THEMIS, back in the command bunker. "Xerses was conducted at 88% of HME. Continuing fire on location, until destruction of target can be verified."

Field Marshal Jameson leaned forwards unconsciously, linked to the Geocity and the command team for the Evangelion Group. "Deploy Evangelion Unit 01," he ordered. "We know Asherah survived the shot from the EVR, but it was injured. If it survived, we want to kill it now, while it's weak."

Major Katsuragi nodded, once. "Understood, sir." Turning away from the link to command, she permitted herself a small smile, despite her nerves. "Launch the Evangelion!"

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

There was a slight pulse in the ground, an irregular beat which could be felt in the bones. Leaning back against a wall, Toja took a deep breath, and unconsciously reached for his MP, patting his pockets with increasing desperation when he couldn't feel its solid bulk. _Oh. Yeah._ Feeling stupid, he pulled out his sister's thinscreen, self-consciously trying to cover its bright pink back. He had nothing to do, while they checked the register, just before they let everyone through the airlock.

_The Grid is currently operating in Restricted Access Mode,_ he read. _Full User Rights are suspended under Code 11 of the Digital Communications Bill, 2087. Temporary Martial Law in Effect._ Under that, was a selection of links, to official information sites, and emergency information. Nothing which could be used to break the tight seals between compartmentalised areas of the Grid in Restricted Access Mode. He was sure, wherever Kensuke was (Naval Cadets, come to think of it), he was probably setting up node-to-node stuff to try to bypass it, or something. Toja wasn't quite sure exactly what you'd do to do that kind of thing. But at least it would be nice to have someone to talk to.

The Nazzadi boy shook his head slightly, and shivered. This was far too similar to what had happened when the thing they had called Harbinger-3 had shown up. The same explosive thudding pattern, the same emergency evacuation. And he was stuck in a shallow bunker again, not deep enough to be properly safe. He used to think a hundred metres down was okay. It wasn't. He'd learned that last time. And yet, again, he was here, surrounded by young children. He had a _bad_ feeling about this.

At least Kany was down deeper this time, safe down in the hospital. That was a mercy.

And... and he'd punched the person who'd been piloting the thing which had killed Harbinger-3. He'd actually done it. It didn't make him feel better. In the cold light of insignificance he now saw himself in, cowering down here in this bunker, he suddenly realised how small he was compared to the bulking figure of that thing, that "Eva". Not least because he could have just blamed the Harbinger for the damage done. But that wasn't the same. That was a faceless horror, and incidentally dead. He'd wanted some_one_ to blame, not something. Although, saying that...

He was broken from his reverie by a tug on his sleeve. He looked down to see a little boy, his purple eyes crinkled up in worry. He looked somewhat familiar, too.

"Come on, Kany's brother," the boy said. Yes, that was it. He was one of his sister's friends. Hikara, was it? Or was it Bernard, or Tomek? No, Tomek was human. Toja was sure that his friends hadn't looked so similar when he had been that age. "Mr Rarinujeri needs to see you, 'cause we can't find Imi. Have you seen?"

"Imi?" Toja asked, following the small boy.

"You know, Imi." At Toja's blank face, the boy gave a sigh which was too old for him. "Oh, come on. I know you've seen her, 'cause we were all there for Kany's birthday." Toja continued to look blank. "Human? She's pale, brown hair," he raised one hand to the left side of his head, "has her hair lop-sided?"

That rang a bell. "Oh, Pigtail Girl."

The teacher, Mr Rarinujeri was arguing with someone over his MP. "I don't know!" he snapped. A pause. "I followed all the normal procedures for evacuation. No, no-one else is missing. Yes, I have checked." A longer pause. "Yes. I'll keep you posted." He lowered the device with a frustrated sigh. "You!" he snapped at the boy. "Toja! Have you seen her. Is she anywhere around here?"

"No. I don't know."

"Damn. Damn..." the teacher glanced at his students, "...and drat." He took a deep, shuddery breath, audible through the filters. "Does anyone _at all_ know where she could be? We had her in the classroom, because I took a register. How could she have gone missing between here and there?"

A little girl raised one hand. "Um... sir, remember, she has that medical thing, where she sometimes can't breathe or talk properly."

"And then sometimes faints," added the boy who had taken him here.

"I know, Bernard," groaned the teacher. "But... well, there isn't a proper team in the gear you'd need to risk going out. They're using arcanochrom..." he glanced at the children, "... nasty big bombs to kill the enemies, and it isn't safe."

"I'll do it," Toja said, in a low voice. They hadn't been let through the airlock yet, because it took time to cycle between groups, and they did have to evacuate the entire school. There wasn't much of a rush, as they were already underground (they didn't know what he knew about that). He could do it. He'd be able to get her.

It wasn't conscious thinking on his part. It wasn't something he chose to do. There was no inner monologue, no debate. He just _knew_ that he had to find her. It was necessary. She was one of his sister's friends. He had to protect her, and she'd be upset if one of her friends died, especially if her brother could have done something, and didn't.

It would be a way of making up for what he did to Kany.

"What the hell are you doing?" the teacher yelled at his back, as he barged his way through the mass of nine and ten year olds.

"I'll find her!" he yelled.

He sprinted for the exit, safe in the knowledge that the lights on the inside of his filter mask were still green. It'd be safe, right, if he was fast?

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Expansion.

Contraction.

Expansion.

Contraction.

The shattered bulk of Eshmun lay on the ground, the broken iridescence of its AT-Field weak and shattering, covered with the blossoming of missile impacts and artillery shells. And always, the Colour, burning it, draining it, the light arcing through higher dimensions and consuming it.

Ichor pooled around it, in the middle of the glassed region where it lay. Further out, fires burned rampant through this dead city, ignited by the incredible heat of the weapons used by the decedents of those who had built it, but around it, bar the fresh explosions, all was grey, and crumbling, and flat, and dead. The all-consuming, reverberating buzz the creature emitted was weakened, and dying, drowned out by the shattering noise of the bombardment.

No.

It was not dead. And it would bring the life it planned to this broken, despoiled world.

_Of all the damned sins in all the worlds,  
__**Gnawing at my skin**__  
This affront is not one I wish to do.  
__**The pain. I feel so much pain.**__  
I would not wish it be this, but it is.  
__**Survive. I must live.**__  
Come, my children. Come into this vile place. _

Behind it, the globules of anathematic flesh which had fallen from its broken and survived the fireball lay quiescent, unmoving. With a thought, it cracked them open, the momentary weakening of its AT-Field enough to permit another blast to slam into it, before it could retain itself.

The hatching began.

_The coruscating vile light may burn me,  
__**Burning! Stop it all!**__  
But the puppets cower in their metal boxes  
__**What are they? What do they do?**__  
Weak and pathetic! They shall all be taken,  
__**Pain, sorrow and pain.**__  
No more metal boxes and no more puppets! _

Pulling itself up onto the legs that ran along its underside (the joints not exactly like a crab's, and not exactly like a spider's), Eshmun raised its broad 'head' up, and _screamed_, the noise tearing the air and making electrons dance away from their bound partners, tearing apart the Colour-drained, greying ground around it, and making the dust burn. A thick, cloying, bruise-coloured gas began to pour from the open wounds that ran through its corpus, the greyness that marked the edge of the arcanochromatically-drained wounds shifting, though still not returning to the wine-colour of the main carapace.

And scuttling, crawling, creeping, it began to move, its legs expanding and extending as its form flowed like wax towards its new goal. Smashing through an ruined apartment block, the rotting concrete flying out in vast clouds of filth, it began to half-squirm, half-bound along, followed by the smaller figures of its offspring, floating around it like a flock of carrion birds around a corpse. And although the weapons might burst like rain against its AT-Field and its thickening, strengthening carapace (already adapting to the new constraints), and might slay its children, it would not be stopped. Not by these faded shadows in their limited, barely real boxes of metal.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Down empty corridors, the boy ran, his breath heavy, and his heart pounding. He could hear the noises of war, far away, and, in fact, he was unconsciously in a sort of crouch-run. Left at the corridor, and up a flight of stairs. Just at the top, he stopped, panting heavily, resting his palms on his thighs, as he tried to catch his breath.

What the hell did he think he was doing?

Now, he was really thinking, and what he had just realised was that he hadn't been thinking. At all. He could barely remember what she looked like, for one (although, actually, she'd be wearing a filter mask, so he wouldn't be able to tell), and had no idea where she was, for two. Oh, and there was some kind of major incursion going on outside, to the extent that they could feel the blast detonations even deep underground, and just to finish it off, he'd already been in trouble once today, and running out of a bunker like that was exactly the sort of thing which would go on your permanent record.

He knew that he'd always been a bit impulsive, but this was just taking it too far.

Shaking his head, he caught a glimpse of the post hung on the wall to his side. It was a hand-drawn picture of a Giant Panda, with both the name and 'Favourite Food: Bamboo" written on it in childish handwriting. That... that didn't help solve his dilemma at all. Neither did the similarly crude picture of the tiger, nor did the one next to it, although that did inform him that 'Reading Is A Good Thing!'.

Straightening up, he took a deep breath through the filters, and sighed. No. He may have failed his sister; he wasn't going to fail one of her friends. If he was stupid and impulsive, then he was going to make the best of the situation that his stupidity and impulsiveness had got him into. Still jogging, he made his way to the classroom.

Toja really began to regret the decision about the time _something_ slammed into the diamond windows, spider-web fractures dancing across the surface.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Lima-Two! Lima-Two! Going live!"

The paths of the two red-wavelength laser beams were barely visible in the air, sketched out in the dust and micromechanical emfog that filled the air. Far more obvious was their point of contact with the vaguely cephalodian _thing_ that buzzed just above ground level, already into a fairly dense urban area. The main defences had been trying to kill Eshmun, the Harbinger, and as a result the horde had broken through in several places. It was a disparate mass, of varying sizes (and where had the mass come from for all of these things, which had matured so quickly?), and yet it was not stupid. There was some kind of greater strategy going on, some give and take which attracted the monsters best suited to a task towards it.

And the combat was a mess. There, one of the Harbinger-spawn was sliced in half, the continuous arcanomagnetically confined plasma beam of the Type-H047 Tank Destroyer cutting through a bloated mass ten metres long; there, a swarm of meter-long fiends crawled and clambered over the outer skin of a ZNB-13, the micromissile launchers and plasmathrowers utterly useless against the things which, with glowing tendrils, systematically dismembered the mecha, before flowing apart before the rest of the squadron could avenge their comrade. The spawn of the Harbinger were weaker than their progenitor, true; much smaller and weaker , and entirely lacking in the AT-Field which caused so much trouble. But they were tough, too tough, and oddly spongy. Weapons like charge beams, optimised for blowing the fuck out of anything which reacted adversely to relativistic particle beams, just punched straight through the epidermis of those things. They were killable, yes. But they weren't killable _easily_.

And overpenetration incidents were causing non-negligible amounts of damage to the local areas of the city, too.

"Be aware, friendly units, Sickle-Prime is on station, and providing close-air support."

Above, a flight of Toxotes missile gunships snapped by, their twin A-Pods utterly silent, before they let loose a hail of rockets into one of the larger Harbinger-Spawn, nearly tearing it in half, before a flock of smaller ones gave chase. The anti-missile lasers, hastily reprogrammed to track these things, tried to do their best, but these creatures were simply bulkier, and tougher, than anything that they would normally deal with. As other flights had been forced to, the Toxotes pulled up, the turn sharp enough that it would have sheared the engines off something more conventionally propelled, and headed straight up, up into the region of safety where the anti-air defences could track the smaller targets, and swat them like files.

But all this was too clinical, too cold to truly represent the havoc on the ground. In truth, the dogs of war had long since slipped their chain, and even now they ran amuck. Long-limbed greyish-blue walkers, their aesthetics an odd mix of pseudo-organic curves and the harsh brutalism of human engineering loped from cover to cover, taking position in armoured redoubts, which protruded from the ground, and ruined buildings equally. Hovering tanks, which looked like armoured gunships, and gunships with tank-like turrets on their underside belched forth cracks of explosive death and sun-bright plasma without prejudice, bracketing the targets in LAI-synchronised fire. And, all around, the terrible noise of the capital grade defences and the shriek of artillery continued unabashed, the bulk of the Harbinger.

Circling, circling, a cluster of the Harbinger-Spawn darted forth, radiant white tendrils shining like a star, smashing through a building and into a squadron of tanks destroyers. Up close, especially when surprised, the charge beams and a-mag weapons were all but useless, as the glowing tentacles that each of the spawn had melted through the layers of heat-resistant armour like butter. The vehicles were ripped apart, their crew an irrelevancy to the creatures. A sudden burst of painfully bright yellowish-purple (or was it green?) light from one vehicle signified the catastrophic failure of its D-Engine before the shutdown could function, a Horizon Event tearing through the fabric of reality. The resulting blast tore the front off the surrounding buildings, and shredded the spawn which had been responsible.

Its kin ignored that, and set off. They could feel the presence of the D-Engines of one of the capital defences, sense the 'glow' of the dimensional violation, and instinctively knew that it was bad. As were the things that were trying to kill them, it should be noted, and to remedy that, they would take preventative actions. One reached down, scooping up the remnants of a tank-destroyer (the wreckage about the same size as its own body), and hurled it, with a sudden straightening of its tentacles.

The pilot of the VDN-24 main battle mecha which happened to be in the path of the projectile would have been surprised, had the impact not crushed the missile tubes, the damage meaning that the failsafe unsafely failed, and the resultant blast turned the contents of the pilot's cockpit into mince.

On the human side of things, the alarmed chatter of pilots and the warning messages of hussar LAIs were quickly silenced by the terminal sanction of the spawn, though their numbers were whittled down by the railgun and plasma fire which tore through their ranks, and further by an overflight of Chalybion gunships, who retreated back before the things could target them too.

One, though, managed to break through the hasty cordon, its broad 'head' slamming into the torso of a Malach, and knocking the Engel down, as its tentacles severed both arms (and the pilot inside screamed from neural feedback, before the Engel Synthesis Interface embedded in her brain cut out). With a sudden burst of speed, it barrelled through a building, unintentionally ricocheting off an interior support, and, swelling, bulging, it made its way towards...

_*splooosh*_

The child of Eshmun burst like overripe fruit, as a hypervelocity 155mm shell detonated just before impact, and shredded the spongy flesh, leaving the remnants of the carcass to slam down into the front of a school. Wrapped in clouds of freezing mist illuminated by the autonomous fire of the laser defence grid, the Babylon rifle venting coolant, Unit 01 stepped over Wade Primary School, following the orders to find the Harbinger.

"Target eliminated," stated the Ouranos LITAN. Shinji nodded, unconsciously (and the Eva's viewpoint shifted slightly, too), and, eyes flicking over the world around him and the AR displays in front of his eyes alike, kept on searching for any movement. He was trying to make his way over to the Harbinger, but the city was not designed for ease of transit for forty-metre tall mecha, and he was trying to avoid (an idea supported by the support staff, down in the Geocity, at least for the moment) destroying anything more of London-2.

He somehow had a feeling that "But that skyscraper was in the way" wouldn't receive much credence, if he were asked to explain why he had demolished it. _I guess I could pretend I fell over... No! No! I'm walking, I'm walking, I'm not thinking about falling over, walk! Walk!_

That was a bad habit he really needed to learn not to do. On pain of pain, and Dr Akagi being offensive about it. Even if, to be honest, Unit 01 had been deployed in the wrong place, although they had not known it at the time. The Harbinger had taken a different path than had been expected, and so he was out of place.

"The Eva's AT-Field is fully developed," reported Lieutenant Ibuki, fingers dancing across her keyboard, as the Evangelion worked its way through the districts.

"Processing fresh data feed from NEGA field units," said the Operator, down in the full-immersion chamber. "Opaque to radar, lidar, microwave... Harbinger-4 doesn't seem to have a core-equivalent, unlike 3."

"It may be internal," said Ritsuko, concern in her voice. "At least we have a hard limit on its regeneration, given that it hasn't regrown its abdomen. Misato?"

The Major was simply relieved that there had been time for that extra training, and, in fact, that she had not passed him into the Child programme before Shinji had shown some basic combat skills. Emphasis on the 'basic', of course. She wouldn't have ever wanted someone like that piloting alongside her, and the LITAN couldn't compensate for everything. "I think..." she began, before the bleep of the proximity alarm alerted them all to the sudden shift in the vector of Eshmun.

It was coming straight towards the Evangelion.

"Shinji, remember your training," the Major ordered. "I'm authorising the use of vECF muntions." She winced slightly. "Remember what you'll be firing."

With a cycle of machinery, and the brief appearance of a progress bar on the Evangelion's HUD, the Babylon switched internal magazines from the perfectly conventional 155mm hypervelocity shaped charges, to the somewhat less mundane variant-electron catalysed fusion warheads. Shinji swallowed a mouthful of LCL (it barely tasted of anything anymore; all he could taste was the bitterness of adrenaline), and squatted down, keeping one eye on his map, the Harbinger an electric-blue dot. Yes, he knew quite well what vECF shells did. It had been half-a-day of instructional videos explaining just how dangerous the things they were giving him were.

The blue dot was getting nearer. There was a slight shift, as the LITAN assembled a wireframe projection of it, through the solid cover of the building. _Hah! Like a building counted as cover, or, indeed, solid,_ he thought bitterly, as he worked his fingers, tightening them in position around the control yokes.

_Let LITAN get lock. Aim with Evangelion. Fire with fingers. Babylon vents. Let LITAN get lock. Aim with Evangelion. Fire with fingers. Babylon vents. Let LITAN get lock. Aim with Evangelion. Fire with fingers. Babylon vents,_ he thought, running over the procedure again, and again. _Okay._

And in one smooth motion, Unit 01 stood up, hand-held weapon raised at the flea-like bulk of Eshmun, even as the autonomous weapons began to fire.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Quite simply, Toja knew that he should flee, knew that he should look away, knew that he should do anything but stand there, and stare vacantly at the scene through the ichor-covered windows. But he couldn't. Frozen on the spot, barely blinking from behind the darkened visor of the filter mask, his eyes flicked between the vast humanoid figure of the Evangelion, and the wine-coloured, scarred mass that was the Harbinger, crawling on its insectoid legs, still leaking ichor from the mess where it was nearly torn in half. And... oddly, he didn't want to run. There was something sickly fascinating about the sight, which even overrode his survival instincts.

He watched, as the Evangelion rose from behind its building. A sudden crack of thunder, and there was light; blinding light that was merely bright, as both the window and the filtermask suddenly went opaque. In the rising fireball that enveloped the monster's head, the Nazzadi boy, even with the reduced colour vision of his subspecies, could see hints of the Colour, rising upwards in a fungoid bloom. The freezing gas vented from the rifle as coolant was lit in prismatic colours, before being blown asunder as the shockwave hit, thundering across the land. There was barely time to raise a hand, before the Babylon fired again, and again, and again, the windows and his filtermask as black as pitch, the cracks along the window alone transparent and casting their own broken, crystalline and prismatic light into the room.

Toja fell over backwards, not from how the ground shook, but from how his leg muscles suddenly turned into jelly from the sudden terror.

Through the darkness of his visor, something burning bright, through the dust and the freezing mist, could be seen to lash out, whipping forwards towards the humanoid figure, into the Evangelion's arm. A spurt of dark-coloured blood splattered its way across a nearby building, before the wound sealed. As a result, the next shot went wide, the vECF warhead blowing out the core of a building and sending a skyscraper plummeting to the ground, only throwing up more dust.

Dust which was blown aside as, from the fireballs, came scuttling the bulk of the Harbinger, its broad head held low, two twitching, sun-bright tentacles reaching before it. Unit 01 barely managed to throw itself out of the way from the charge, falling to one knee, but managing to turn just in time to take another lash against its right arm. With just a hint of slowness which had not been there before, it turned, and another crack spoke of another shot from the Babylon, at very close range. There was no detonation this time, only the shimmering light of Eshmun's AT-Field and the vented coolant illuminated by the lasers mounted over the Evangelion.

With a sudden burst of speed, which was not quite a jump, and which was not quite flight, the wine-coloured monster surged forwards, the 155mm shell it took to the middle of the forehead at point blank range, and the resultant gush of bruise-coloured vapour, not enough to dissuade its passage. Over and over it rolled, locked in a tight embrace with Unit 01, its whip-tendrils leaving wherever they touched slagged, even as its crab-like legs dug at the Eva's back. The passage of the two titans demolished buildings, free-standing and sealed arcology alike. The sun-bright tentacles melted whatever they touched as they rolled, even as the Evangelion frantically clawed at the Harbinger with the hyperedged blades attached to its fingers.

The deathly embrace was only broken by human intervention, as a rain of missiles, zeroed in from the Geocity on Unit 01's own signature, punched a line of fleshy craters along the back of the creature, the impacts small stars in the thick dust. The resultant fireballs tore through the buildings which the two leviathans had wrecked, only adding to the chaos, but the alien monstrosity largely protected Evangelion Unit 01 from the blast, and the warning which it had received had been enough for, in the confusion (as the hellish buzz of Eshmun grew higher in pitch), for it to get one foot under the chest of the Harbinger, and send it flying back into another building, shattering the insectoid legs which had been wrapped around the Unit.

Those blasts had been much, much closer, and larger too. The shockwave battened the building, knocking over chairs, part of the ceiling collapsing. Half-crawling, Toja managed to make his way under one of the desks, and curled up into a ball, survival instincts all that remained to him.

Slowly pulling itself partially upright, the Evangelion straightened up. It had lost one of the wing-like pylons which protruded from its back, in the brawl, and dark blood dripped forth from where it had shattered, running in rivulets down the small of the Unit's back. Nevertheless, it was ready. Its left, uninjured hand groped for the fallen Babylon, while the right arm supported its weight.

Which was, naturally, when the tentacles whipped out again, both attacking in perfect synchronisation. One punched through the right arm arm, severing tissue and muscle and machine, and somehow _expanded_ within the wound, tearing it up from the inside, sending the Evangelion crashing to the ground. The other sought out the torso, and found it, burrowing within like a flesh-eating luminescent worm, before digging down into the ground. Slowly, too slowly, the Harbinger crawled (on now-broken legs) towards the pinned Evangelion.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Warning! DEV12/DDV13 RA Offline. Reconfiguring power and heat distribution grids. Restricted power flow to right arm. Class 4 weapons disabled."

Icons all down the left side of the Evangelion's body were flashing red. The armour there was seared, cooked; the sophisticated heat-resistant ceramics and high-reflectivity layered armour no match for the brute force of the Harbinger. The right arm hung entirely limp and useless, unpowered and heavily damaged, the servos in the armour, and the muscles, both synthetic and arcane, of the underlying organism, melted. The LITAN was reporting on the most urgent of the errors, even as unfamiliar messages scrolled down in front of the pilot's eyes.

"Warning! DEV12/DDV13 T-1 and DEV12/DDV13 T-3 Offline. Warning! Insufficient power for peak operations. Switching to back-up supply. Warning! Insufficient heat disposal capacity. Class 3 weapons disabled."

"How did it do that?" Ritsuko muttered, eyes hollow. "It knew exactly where to target the engines. Harbinger-class entities possibly sensitive to D-distortions?" she spoke into her PCPU.

"Shinji, you've lost three of your D-engines!" the Major snapped, leaning into the microphone. "Pull back! I'll get you cover-fire. Shut off all the weapons down his right side," she added, turning to the technical staff. "I don't want him cooking himself without the D-Fridges working, either."

"The Ouranos has already done that, Major Katsuragi."

Whimpering, Shinji gripped onto the control yokes as tight as he could. His arm... the Evangelion's arm felt funny, even through the pain. Weak and floppy. And all of his right side felt like... well, it felt like that one holiday they had had to Shikoku, back before that major Dagonite attack had led to the restriction of arcology exist passes. He'd managed to get horribly sunburnt then. It felt exactly like that.

"Shinji, get up!"

Pinned to the group, it hurt even more to move.

Overhead, a flight of Chalybion gunships could be seen, emerging from the dust that filled the skyline from the conflict. The roar of charge beams from the tail-like turret of the fliers, and the extrapolated-from-scatter paths of the ultraviolet lasers, was nothing compared to the infernal buzzing of Eshumn. The silvery-white light of an AT-Field above the Harbinger showed where the blasts were hitting, but even the ones which broke the shattered light didn't seem to stop it.

_Kill! Kill! You are not a shadow! Kill! Kill!  
__**Kill kill kill kill kill.**__  
My own children are dead, piled into mounds,  
__**Kill kill kill kill kill kill kill.**__  
And your barren colour has entered me.  
__**Kill kill kill kill kill.**__  
Too real! You bring the final death! Too real!_

"He's trapped. Synch ratio is falling."

"Mental pattern is destabilising. Loss of concentration, probably."

"Scramble whatever forces you get! I don't care! I have Advisor status for exactly this situation, and so I'm _advising_ you that the Evangelion is your best current hope for killing that thing! And it can't do that if it's pinned to the ground."

"Rei is suited up, correct?"

The vile, convolving, broken form of the Harbinger, was dragging itself across the ground. It was sheared in half even before he saw it, behind it, even as he writhes in pain on the burning tentacles, he can see the trail of bruise-coloured liquid drooling out, and it has only been injured further. The loss of its rear half seemed to have removed its capacity for true flight. Its carapace is pockmarked with craters, some grey and crumbling from the use of tactical arcanochromatic weapons. And its legs are now shattered and broken. It seems to be regenerating slowly, but the legs are malformed and twisted, no longer able to truly support its weight.

"Shinji! You need to get up!"

"Bravo Company is on rou... damn it, more of those things."

"Thunderbird-6 inbound. Please retreat to minimum safe distance."

"It's no good."

No. Something snapped inside, as he watched that broken, purplish shape pull nearer. It was pathetic. He had crushed its children, popped them like water balloons. And look at it! It was more damaged than he was!

With the one functional hand, the Evangelion reached out, and grabbed the tentacle that was stuck into his right hand side. Wincing in pain, but with a slight mad look in his eyes, Shinji tightened his grip around the sun-bright plasma, and, AT-Field suddenly flaring into iridescent, crystalline light around his hand, snuffed it out, crushing it in the inexorable claw.

Shinji began to pant, lips wide open in a rictus grin, deep gulps of LCL flowing in and out of his lungs. With his left hand, he groped for the Babylon, getting his hand on the firing mechanism, and, as the weapon synched up with the Unit's internal controls (no, of course he didn't fire it by squeezing a trigger. That would be inefficient, and problematic, considering the fact that trigger design was not a science well advanced for 40 metre robots), he grinned, lips pulled tight over his bared teeth.

Then, leaning forwards into a sprinters position, he charged. The other one energy tentacle was torn right out of the arm, jets of dark ichor accompanying it, but the sudden rush of adrenaline blanked out the immediacy of the pain, replacing it with a dull ache which seemed irrelevant to the fact that _he_ was going to _kill_ this _thing_.

The Harbinger might have had just enough time to experience the sensation of shock, before the colossal boot of the Eva collided with its 'face', sending it flying backwards. Luckily, locally all the buildings had been knocked down by their preceding brawl, so at least there wasn't any more buildings to damage along this path, but on the negative side, the Evangelion had kicked it really, really hard, so judging by this trajectory, that was only a temporary state of affairs.

Misato was yelling something at him down the radio. He really couldn't hear her, a mix of pain, adrenaline, and suddenly unleashed anger making her words only so much noise.

"Shoot it! With everything!" he roared at the LAI, as his momentum carried him onwards, a second kick, the AT-Field sparkling around the foot nearly disembowelling (if it had bowels) the Harbinger before it, or he, had hit the ground. Tumbling backwards, Eshmun continued to roll, tearing up the ruins with its reigniting tendrils. Waving his arm, Shinji just managed to regain balance, thinking _very hard_ about not falling over, before he took a step back, levelling the Babylon one-handed at the twitching Harbinger.

The recoil was immense. It was, in fact, so great that he accidentally slapped himself in the face, his arm moving with the Evangelion's. Ignoring the stinging pain (heh. He had already been punched today. That was ages ago, wasn't it?) he struggled, stepping back on the uneven ground, to both stay upright and lower the weapon. The Babylon was an Evangelion-scale rifle, and that meant it wasn't meant to be fired in one hand. Much as a conventionally-sized one wasn't. Shinji could feel the bruises blossom up his forearm, as the yellow lights reported multiple fractures along the left arm's armour, even as clouds of freezing coolant obscured his visible light vision. Nevertheless he watched with open eyes and feral grin as the blasted-open underside of Eshmun appeared from under the fireball, greyed and poisoned and spasming.

"How do I kill it?" he screamed at his support staff. Oh. Oww. That really hurt. Oh. Had he broken something?

Ritsuko looked momentarily shocked. "Sufficient damage. It doesn't have an external core-equivalent, so it's probably inside its body."

Pushing forwards on the control yokes with both hands, teeth gritted, Shinji... no, Unit 01 made its way to the twitching Harbinger, right arm limp at its side, dark blood leaking from the multiple cracks in the arm, the puncture holes in the torso, and from the torn-off pylon. Its feet shook the ruins, crushing demolished building underfoot. Ahead, the Harbinger lay, that noxious, bruise-coloured light-gas leaking from all of its many wounds.

_What if it does the explody thing like the last one?_ Shinji suddenly realised, with a sinking feeling. Too late to think about that. He tried to will the other arm to move, jerking on the right control yoke as hard as he could. Nothing.

"Switch ammo on the Babylon," he told the LITAN. The loading bar flashed, and was gone. That was sensible. He didn't want to forget, and accidentally blow himself up. Of course, he also didn't want to have his arm hurt like that again... generally, the Babylon wasn't a good weapon for that. That reminded him; Shinji checked that all the other weapons, the lasers and the shoulder mounted missile pods (oh, they were empty, he noted) and the 20mm cannons (also empty) were still hitting the target. Certainly, it seemed that the LITAN was not sparing with the ammunition based weapons, though, of course, there was a strict limit to how much the Evangelion could carry, because, where a normal mecha had storage space, an arcanocyberxenobiological organism had organs and stuff.

It seemed so far to walk. He really was feeling light-headed now, from the pain. But now he was here, and, yes, in the centre of the blasted open body, spewing forth that bruised-light, was some kind of cracked crystalline structure. Dropping the Babylon (it landed with a very expensive sounding clatter), he pulled back one clawed fist, and slammed it with a sudden brutal finality into the core, an impossibly pure note sounding out, as the pre-existing cracks widened and spread.

Beneath him, the Harbinger twitched.

_What are you? What are you? What are you? What  
__**are you? What are you?**__  
Can't I see? Somehow familiar? Hard to  
__**think. What are you? Do not know.**__  
Killing me. Sorrow and pain. So much pain.  
__**My children are dead.**__  
Pain. Pain. Somehow familiar. What are you? _

Another blow. And another. And another, the left fist descending over and over again.

Finally, a rupture.

And oblivion.

Slowly, the remains of Harbinger-4, so damaged, so abused, sank into a foul, effervescent fluid, the same tainted bruised colours as its core.

Slowly, Shinji Ikari clutched at his arms and let out a scream of pain through clenched teeth, from the pain all down his right flank, and shooting up his left arm.

Slowly, Unit 01 sagged and fell to the ground, collapsing on top of a formerly relatively intact building and demolishing it.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

All too slowly, Toja pulled himself out from under the table. He... he was alive. He was actually still alive. And with all limbs attached, too. Looking around through the dust filled air, at the classroom of fallen chairs and broken ceiling tiles, he reflexively coughed.

The windows were caked black with... something. No, he realised, it wasn't something. They'd denatured? Was that the right word? They'd done that think where photosensitive stuff got stuck on the opaque mode, normally after being exposed to really bright light.

Stepping back, he realised that there was a pattern. A patch of less-dark glass, in the middle of all the darkness. It was... it was human shaped.

Wrapping his arms around himself, Toja began to shiver. That... that was its shape, wasn't it. A patch of less-darkness, where it had been obstructing the radiance from those blasts. Just looking at it was making the colour drain from the world. Just like outside, in the greyness. And there it was, its legs sticking out of a wrecked building. Sprawled on the ground. In the middle of something dark. And fluidy.

Someone was calling out something. With an effort, he realised it was his name. Turning slowly, he could see a little human girl, head poking around the doorway.

"Toja."

He blinked, heavily. "Yes," he managed.

There was a moment of silence, as the girl stared at him. "You are Kany's brother, aren't you?"

"Yes." Why was he here? What was he looking for. Why had he come out of the safety? Oh yes. "Are you... are you Imi?"

The little girl nodded. "Yes."

"I... yes. I went to find you. We need to get down to the bunker. Now."

Crossing the classroom to his side, standing on tiptoes, the girl peered out of the lighter patch of the window, too. "But the sirens have stopped, and the thing is dead," she pointed out, staring at the sight before them.

"Doesn't matter. Need to get to bunker." He paused, and blinked, the mist that seemed to fill his mind lifting for a moment. "Where have you been?"

"I had to get another injector from my bag, because I had lost mine," the little girl said. "And then everyone was gone, and the sirens were still going, and I did not know the way to the bunker. So I hid in the art cupboard instead."

"Did you?" That did, even in the boy's current mental state, seem a lot more sensible. Certainly more sensible than hiding under a child's desk, and watching a lot of the fight.

She tugged at his sleeve. "Can you take me to the bunker then, please."

The world around him seemed grey and filled with fog, all sound muffled. Even his sense of touch was muted, so that surfaces seemed padded. Silently, mutely Toja stumbled onwards, down the stairs, leading the girl by instinct.

The relief on the teacher's face could not erase the terror which had been there before. "My God," he said, and while Toja knew, intellectually, that the voice was packed with emotion, in the obfuscated world in which he dwelt there was only a cold, feelingless drone. "You found her. And you're both alive. Our wireless Grid coverage was down, so we couldn't even track either of you."

"I found him," the little girl, Imi said, her voice similarly unreadable to the boy's addled mind.

The teacher turned to face her. "What were you doing." It was impossible to tell if that was a question, or an outraged exclamation. "Why did you run off like that."

"I dropped my medicine when we were trying to leave," she said, as childish fingers tried to undo her mask, now that they were down in safety. "And it broke. It was necessary. I needed to go get some more from my bag."

"You know you're not meant to do that. You're meant to tell a teacher, and never, ever, ever run off on your own, especially if we're trying to evacuate."

"But I need to have my medicine with me. Else I won't breathe properly."

"That means you tell a teacher, and they'll go get it with you." The man sighed. "You did get it, though."

"Yes."

"And you're feeling alright."

"I am now. I had to take some, though, because I was scared," she said. The girl turned, and pointed at Toja, a thin, pale face framed by brown hair blending into the greyness (it wasn't really grey, though, now that he thought about it; it just felt grey and tired and misty) around him. "He's not well, though. He was looking out the window when I found him." The teacher turned to look at him, worry on his face. This was interrupted, though, as a swarm of small children managed to break the teacher-cordon near the exit, and flocked in.

"Imi!"

"What happened!"

"Kany's brother saved you, didn't he? He said he would, and then he ran out of the bunker!"

"So coo~ooool!"

"Awesome."

"What a _hero_!"

That was the thing though. He wasn't a hero. He was just an idiot. God, the nine-year old girl had been brighter than him; at least she'd hidden somewhere safe, rather than under a table. A stupid, impulsive idiot who'd rushed in without thinking, and hadn't accomplished anything at all. He never did. Better this way, than get her hurt, like he had his sister. But that didn't mean he was brave, or a hero, or anything but a stupid little boy.

What an idiot.

He had punched the real hero.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Leaning back on the bed, Shinji stretched, squirming against the mattress. Above him, the bright white lights of the observation chamber shone down on the stark room. That was not to say that it was bare, just... ruthlessly utilitarian. Although there was furniture in here, there was a certain roundedness, paddedness and weight to it which clearly spoke of the design considerations which had determined its structure. Namely, the designers had not wanted for it to be something the occupant of the room could use to hurt themselves, or, indeed, others.

It was quite astonishing that, primarily, he was feeling _bored_.

"We're going to keep you down here for a while, for observation," Misato had said, as they'd got him out of the recovered entry plug, but before they'd run the battery of medical checks, or, indeed, extracted the LCL from his lungs. It was a strange, sloshy sensation to walk around in the sealed plug-suit variant, the world tainted orange by the fluid which filled the area behind the transparent faceplate. But he was used to it, too. She... she hadn't been too happy about what he'd done. He should have pulled back once he had freed himself, and they would have dropped a nuke on it. Not damage the Evangelion further.

To be fair, neither had he. That had hurt. And Dr Akagi had noted that 'Don't fire rifles with one hand' was now going to be added to the basic training guide. And, no, apparently, it wasn't that easy to make it otherwise. He had been in some pain, and largely saying it to annoy her, in fairness.

That didn't matter. He had heard the unspoken words from both of them, because, outside of the anger, he had thought them too. _Why didn't you try to take it alive?_

Well, they hadn't told him to. It was their fault, if that was what they had wanted.

Pulling up his t-shirt, he checked his stomach again. Nothing. He'd felt the pain as it stabbed into him... not quite true pain, but more like some kind of reflection; a dull ache. But his body looked fine. He still wasn't feeling well inclined towards whoever came up with the idea of a war machine which hurt the pilot when it got damaged. Not well inclined at all.

At least he wasn't feeling the same utter exhaustion after the incident with Harbinger-3. He was tired, yes, but this was just the kind of tiredness which came from a temper outburst, that kind of weariness after exertion. Actually remarkably like an exam, come to think of it. Still, with luck, whatever had happened, what the Evangelion had done, what _he_ had done to that first Harbinger would never happen again. He still wasn't sure; there were flashes of memory, nothing more.

Sitting up, he pulled his t-shirt back down and flattened down his tousled hair (now, mercifully clean of LCL; they were very careful about that in the decontamination procedure, and that was something he fully understood. It tasted vile, after all), and moved over to the seating area, booting up the desk with a button press.

_Let's see... yes. Oh, good, they transferred my muse over here._ That was nice enough, he felt. At least this way, he could keep himself entertained. But, first things first.

"Go to the PBO site," he told the LAI, "... and connect to the news channel." Shinji had to admit that he was more than a little curious to see how they would be reporting... or not reporting, as the case may be, what had just happened. _I'm certainly not an egotist. I don't want to see whatever they're saying, and feel all hot and smug inside that it was me. Even if it hurt. And they're probably not giving me the credit. Not that I want it, of course; I never wanted to have to get into the __Evangelion in the first place. But that doesn't mean that I can't feel irritated that they're not worshipping me as their saviour._

_Actually... that would really be kind of embarrassing, to be worshipped as a god-king. Some thanks would be nice, but I'll settle for not being punched this time._ Inwardly, he groaned. _Oh. I really hope I didn't hurt anyone else this time. I know it's not my fault, really, but it's still sort of my fault._

"Access denied," the muse said, in its clear voice.

Shinji frowned. "Why?"

"You are currently in psychological observation. Access to outside sources of information has been restricted."

Shinji let his head slump forwards, and banged it against the desk. "_Et tu_, you brute?" he muttered, as he rubbed his forehead.

"I am sorry." The LAI paused. "You currently have three pieces of homework which you have not yet completed," it added. "If you are bored, access to these activities is unrestricted. By previous behaviour, you will not complete it on time if you do not do it now. And it will free up more time later, when you have access to outside data feeds."

The boy groaned. "What are you, my mother?"

"No."

"That wasn't a question." Shinji paused. "Well, it was. But it was a rhetorical question." Something which muses tended to have problems with, as it had been found that false negatives annoyed people more than false positives, when trying to interact with a LAI. The thing was to remember that the LAI wasn't a person; something which was hard, when you had one so attuned, as he did. Shinji shook his head. It actually did make sense. But the LAI had always seemed to co-operate with Yuki and Gany to make sure that he got homework done, and, generally, nagging him. That was, from the point of view of the designers, a feature, not a bug; Shinji was fairly sure that whoever came up with these things was of the opinion that people needed to be prodded into doing things, and this held doubly true for children. And, yes, in truth, he probably would have a lot more problems handling his life, without his muse to do the menial organisational stuff. But... wait a moment.

"I thought I hadn't set a priority for the homework yet," he said slowly.

"The priority of the homework was set to Urgent by a direct override by Major Misato Katsuragi of the New Earth Government Army."

_Stupid emergent heuristic behavioural programming. And stupid Misato._

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Sitting back in his chair, Gendo Ikari began to reread the formal report he was preparing for the Minister of War. Sections had already been tagged in yellow by his muse for checking, the phrasing adjusted from the rough description of contents into a fully fledged and verbose essay. He had had this Limited Artificial Intelligence for over a decade, after all, and so it was fully conversant with his style. In fact, it amused him that, unless he put in more effort than he could spare at the moment, the muse in fact wrote more idiosyncratically like him than he did. With a few keystrokes, he deleted half a sentence, pausing as he considered how to rephrase it.

It had been necessary to be rushed back to the Geocity in order to deal with the local civic authorities in the aftereffects of Harbinger-4; something rather inconvenient, as he had been involved in some rather important meetings with local Ashcroft personnel and the Navy, in Geneva, about the topic of Annulus, which he would now have to reschedule. The way that the Harbinger had shown up was annoying, a disruption to his schedule, especially for a man famed for his tendency to micromanage. Everyone knew that he would have preferred to be in the Geocity when the threat was detected.

That had, after all, been the point.

"Deputy Representative Fuyutsuki is outside," the muse informed him.

"Send in him," the man said, not looking up from his desk.

The echoing, statacco beat of the older man's footsteps pulsed through the empty space. Gendo sighed, and waved a hand at the desk, turning off the screen. He was going to have to deal with this later.

"I've gone over the preliminary budget for the operation," Fuyutsuki said. "Both mass-energy and financial. And," he winced, "we really have to get your... the Third Child more familiar with the concept of 'not damaging the Evangelion'. Ritsuko is... not pleased with the damage. Massive damage to the right arm, several fractures in endoskeleton of the left, quite a bit of torso damage. She's especially displeased about the left arm, because that was avoidable."

His protégé tilted his head slightly. "She is also fully aware that such things are necessary. She merely complains at you because you are someone she can complain at."

"Oh, I know that." The old man sighed. "But she does go on."

"Quite," and Gendo left it at that. He paused. "I have a meeting with her tomorrow evening. I am sure I'll be hearing the same, if she hasn't calmed down by then."

"Anton will be pleased that they managed to capture a few of those things it hatched alive, quite apart from the corpses."

"No doubt." The younger man tapped his fingers on his desk idly. "And I can hardly wait to see how many people he'll lose, trying to weaponise them. I've already granted the Engel Group more resources, to deal with the study of these things."

"That might also explain some of Ritsuko's irritation," said Fuyutsuki, sighing. The white-haired man sunk down into the chair in front of the desk with a small groan. "I've been standing up for too long today," he said. "My spine is playing up again."

"I am sorry to hear that," Gendo said, curtly.

"I should be enjoying my retirement."

"You have the option of doing so. I cannot legally stop you taking a well-earned rest."

Fuyutsuki sighed. "You know I can't retire, not now. You'd have to find a replacement, and the disruption could be dangerous. But that does mean I can complain about my age occasionally!"

"I believe we had agreed upon that, yes."

"Do you have to be..." the older man shook his head. "Talking to you is like talking to..." The Representative raised an eyebrow at him. "Never mind. The reason I am here, really," he continued, "is that... I presume you've seen the reports from the Academy."

"Yes." Gendo turned the screen of his desk back on, telling the muse to find the relevant documents. "It appears that a pioneering group of students managed, from only a very little evidence, to deduce the existence of the Evangelion Group and of the Test Pilot programme." The words were said completely without emotion. "Internal Security has been informed of the holes which they stumbled across, and will act to fix them, as best they can. The named students have been briefed on the need for secrecy, and the consequences of failing to maintain it."

Fuyutusuki squinted at him. "Most people would be a little more concerned about the kind of flaws in security which would let out information about a top secret Project."

"I am terrified." The tone was deadpan.

"I see," the older man sighed, leaning back in his chair. It was slightly annoying that the chair for visitors was just slightly lower than the one which the Representative sat in; it put all guests in a position of supplication. Quite deliberately, of course; it was merely another way that this room served to intimidate.

"The Evangelion Units are not a subtle weapon. A non-negligible number of military personnel not cleared for such knowledge are already aware, through mere observation, that the New Earth Government possesses some kind of secret, capital grade mecha. The Project was always going to be discovered at some point, after it was deployed in defence of the city."

"And the fact that students were capable of doing so merely backs those who argue that the secrecy, once it has been shown that there are multiple viable Test Pilots, is unnecessary?"

Orange-tinted glasses reflected the light of the desk back. "It would be possible to read things that way, yes."

"And the fact that knowledge that you have, among your assets, access to capital-grade ACXB units, only plays to your own advantage, strengthening your hand against the Research Representative, as well as NEG military and civilian authorities?"

"Is purely coincidental."

"And the fact that it appears that part of the data which," he checked his palmtop device, "Taly Talerni oy Chicago-twi oy..." he sighed, with the weariness of a man who had already been in his forties when the First Arcanotech War started, "... and I think we can skip the rest of the overly long name... part of the data one of the students used has already been lost in a server crash, and so the only evidence we have that it exists is the back-ups that she and another student made of it? Given that it was a server crash which seems to have corrupted that site's own, off-site back-ups? And all the Grid archival sites we have tagged?"

"That is a problem. It would have made it easier to have traced the leak if we had access to such a thing."

Fuyutsuki sighed. "Neither the Council of Representatives nor AHNUNG will be pleased."

"And that is a terrible shame, but they must be made aware of the necessities on the ground. I am sure that the Council will agree with me, that it is better that we go public in a method we control, and can play to our own advantage." Gendo paused. "Well, apart from Christina, but she objects to pretty much anything I suggest on general principles," he added with a frown.

"And you are completely innocent of any antagonism towards her, Ikari."

Ignoring the older man, Gendo continued, "And as for AHNUNG," the man's lips were concealed behind his white, sterile gloves, "... well, they have _influence_, but for all their pretensions and obsessions, they lack _control_. They know it; they know that I know that. They will accede, once the advantages are explained to them."

Stretching his neck, Kozo Fuyutsuki slowly levered himself upright. "How goes research into 'The Heart of Rogziel', by the way?" he asked, knees clicking.

"Poorly," Gendo admitted. "I have not made any more progress into finding the solution for the c-language, although it does bear some resemblance to Salaamian sorcerous markings... not in the vocabulary, nor in the grammar, but in the structure." He paused. "What I presume to be the structure," he admitted. "And you know of my beliefs that there is some kind of sapience within, which acts to circumvent such attempts. All that stands are the brute-force attempts, and the construct that results from such things is unstable and incomplete. And I do not have the time to spare at the moment, and cannot risk another accident." For a moment, he looked lost. "I wish Yui were here," he added softly. "She was always better at esoterics. Not the actual practice of sorcery, she couldn't do that at all, but this kind of study of the root cause, this study of the obscure, the non-intuitive leaps... I miss her."

There was a hollow silence in the office. Gendo blinked, and just as suddenly, the mask was back on.

The older man shifted uncomfortably. "When are you going to propose that Project Evangelion be revealed to the public?" asked Fuyutsuki, the words coming out a little too quickly, as if he were trying to get the conversation away from the previous topic.

"Not until we have shown that Unit 00 can start up, and maintain a stable synchronisation link," the man answered, his eyes hidden by the opacity of his arglasses. "Such an event was a black mark in our book, and we cannot hope for the Evangelions to be viewed as a stable combat platform while the risk that such an event could happen again still hangs over our heads. Schedule the reactivation test for as soon as Rei is physically capable of doing so."

"I understand." Fuyutsuki's footsteps receded, off into the distance, as he left. Gendo did not watch him go, but instead returned, head lowered, to his report.

~'/|\'~


	7. Chapter 6: Die Grabesmutter

**Chapter 6**

**Die Grabesmutter / And the sullen rear was with its stored thunder labouring up.**

**ENTELECHY**

~'/|\'~

_**Die Natur des Menschen bleibt immer dieselbe; im zehntausendsten Jahr der Welt wird er mit Leidenschaften geboren, wie er im zweiten derselben mit Leidenschaften geboren ward, und durchläuft den Gang seiner Thorheiten zu einer späten, unvollkommenen, nutzlosen Weisheit. Wir gehen in einem Labyrinth umher, in welchem unser Leben nur eine Spanne abschneidet; daher es uns fast gleichgültig sein kann, ob der Irrweg Entwurf und Ausgang habe. **_

_The nature of man remains ever the same: in the ten thousandth year of the World he will be born with passions, as he was born with passions in the two thousandth, and ran through his course of follies to a late, imperfect, useless wisdom. We wander in a labyrinth, in which our lives occupy but a span; so that it is to us nearly a matter of indifference, whether there be any entrance or outlet to the intricate path._

Johann Gottfried Herder  
"Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit", Vol. 2, p. 186; translation vol. 2, pp. 266-7

~'/|\'~

**21st of February, 2079**

"But _Mama_, I'm hungry!"

The little girl's mother glanced down at her, the corners of her eyes creasing up in a smile. "Now, come on, Asuka," the woman said. "We don't want to ruin your appetite, do we?"

"I do!"

"No, we don't. We're having a big dinner with Uncle Cal, this evening, and that means that you'll want to be on your best behaviour."

The little girl pouted. "But I'm hungry now!"

Kyoko Zeppelin Soryu sighed, a slight smile in her voice, and searched through her handbag. "Would a drink be okay, Asuka?" she asked. "I have orange juice..."

The little girl slumped to the ground, arms folded, a frown on her face. "But I want food now. I don't want a fancy meal or stuff with Uncle Cal." She stuck her hands into the pockets of her pale dress, made of undyed cotton. "Why can't I have food now?"

"Don't do that, Asuka, you'll ruin the lining of the dress," Kyoko snapped. She consciously tried to calm her expression. "Because," she explained again, "we have a big important dinner planned." She sighed. "Do you want the juice or not?"

"I want it."

"Okay, now take your hands out of your pockets, and stand up, and you can have it."

The child slowly, hesitantly pulled herself upright, both hands held out. The suction-capped bottle was handed over.

"I'm sorry it's taking so long, Asuka," Kyoko said, shaking her head, as her daughter began to emit slurping noises as she lifted the sports bottle in both hands. "And Cal's going to be in a bit of trouble when he shows up, because he's late."

"So it's all his fault that I'm hungry, then?" the girl asked, lowering the bottle.

"... I wouldn't put it exactly like..."

"So, right," said her daughter, a calculating look in her blue eyes, "that means he should be bringing me a nice present, right?"

"That is possible?" Kyoko said, blandly.

"But is he doing it?"

"Maybe."

"Is he?"

"It is possible."

"But _is_ he?"

Kyoko sighed. "It's a secret. Drink your orange juice."

There was silence. Then, "Mama?"

"Yes?"

"Are you going to marry Uncle Cal?"

Kyoko coughed loudly, spluttering, while her daughter, clutching the bottle of orange juice close to her, looked up in worry. "Where... what... where did that come from?" she managed, weakly, gesturing to pass the orange juice.

"I asked you."

The red-haired woman, almost as red in the face, took a long drink, and wiped her mouth. "No..." she paused, rephrasing the question. "I meant, why did you ask that?"

"Oh, well, I was thinking, you like him, and he gets me presents, so you could get married, and he could be my daddy."

Kyoko shook her head sadly, at the combination of innocence and childish greed in the suggestion. "It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid. He's already married. And you can't marry someone who's already married," she explained, trying to simplify matters.

"Oh." The little girl looked upset, as she raised her hands to have the bottle passed back to her. "But Mamas always marry the nice Uncle on TV."

Kyoko paused. How to explain this? She suddenly had a wave of sympathy for her own mother; Asuka was just as curious as she had been at the same age. "Things don't happen like they do on TV in real life," was the answer she settled for.

"Why not?"

Of course. The inevitable response. "Because sometimes, things on TV happen because people want them to happen, rather than because they're realistic."

"Why?"

"Because it makes people happy to watch something that isn't realistic. I mean, bad things happen in the world sometimes, but people don't like it when it happens, so they tell stories where only nice things happen."

"But that's lying!"

"Not really," Kyoko winced. "It's just telling stories to make people happy."

The little girl tilted her head, and narrowed her blue eyes. "Sooo~oooo," she said, elongating the word, "it's okay to lie to people if it makes them happy, then?"

"No. No, it's not. Drink your orange juice, Asuka."

"I'm sorry I'm late," a precise, elegant male voice called out, from behind them.

The little girl dropped the bottle of juice to the floor, where it began to leak, and ran over, colliding with the man's legs with a slight squeak, and hugging onto them. "Uncle Cal!" she squealed.

"Hello, Asuka," the man, who was not her biological Uncle, said to her, scooping her up and clutching her to his shoulder.

Kyoko smiled, as she bend down, and picked up the bottle, wiping the top clean and resealing the lid before tucking it back in her bag. The man, tall and thin (even taller than she was, and she wasn't short), had a neatly trimmed beard matching his precisely cut, rust-coloured hair. He was a bit of a narcissist, actually, she noted; most male scientists tended to either let the beard grow to a manageable length, and just trim it, or keep clean shaven. It took more effort than most were willing to take to keep such a fine state of grooming. More than most of the women actually put in either, probably. There was something around his eyes which didn't match his features, the hint a product of Vietnamese blood in his broadly Gallo-Russian heritage.

"Can we go have food, now, plee~ease?"

"Soon, soon," he answered, bouncing her up and down slightly, as he turned his head to the girl's mother. "Kyoko," he said. "Sorry I'm late; the Magi were being uncooperative."

Kyoko snorted. "As always. Hello, Calvin."

"Yes. Magi-80 finally managed to get a valid build." He shook his head. "I'd swear, -83 and -88 hate me. Never seem to work. But Eighty... Eighty is lucky for me. Naoko was very unhelpful," he added.

"Yes, because that's _totally_ a change in behaviour for her." Kyoko paused, and rolled her eyes. "Well, actually, yes it is. Normally, I'd call her 'exceptionally unhelpful'. I swear sometimes..."

"But you shouldn't swear," interjected the little girl.

"Shush, Asuka. I _think_ sometimes," she said, changing her words, "that she'd marry them if she could. Like the names? Calling Magi-80 Casper, and -83 Melchior, and... so on. Just a little pretentious. How is it..."

Calvin waved her quiet. "Guess what, Asuka?"

"What?"

"I got you a present."

"Yay!" She began to squirm in his arms. "What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it?"

Carefully, he put her down, and took off the backpack he was wearing. "Be careful with it," he said, "because it is fairly delicate."

"Not too delicate, I hope," Kyoko interjected, a worried look on her face. "Remember, Calvin, she is four. And you did check that the pieces are child-safe, didn't you?"

"I might be four, but I'm still a big girl. What is it? What is it?"

A small, metallic quadruped was lifted out of the bag, and put down. It was maybe 30 centimetres all, coloured a metallic bluish-grey, and vaguely canine in shape. It was, however, very smoothed down, as appropriate for a child's toy, the only protrusions from the body of plastic coating and the clear bits which showed the black artificial musculature being the flaps on the head, which could close to protect its torch-like single eye.

"Well it's a... technically, it's not a LITAN. More like a LIPFA."

"A what?"

"A Limited Information Pet For Asuka. It's a small LAI network in the body of a robotic pet dog."

"But dogs' heads don't look like that. I know, because we looked at the books last time we went to Chicago-3."

"Chicago-2," Kyoko corrected her.

"Oh. Chicago-2, then." She frowned. "I thought we went to Chicago-3. Or something -3, anyway."

"That was Toyko-3,darling."

"Okay." A childish finger prodded the toy, making it wobble from side to side. "So, how do I make it work?"

Calvin nodded. "Can you pass me your PCPU, please, Asuka?"

"'Kay!"

The man took the small, child-safe computer (a piece of technology devoid of sharp edges, and with a nice, solid build which wouldn't break when someone in the intended 2-5 age range dropped it), and plugged a cable in from the side of his own, considerably more sleek model. "Just wait while it does the... okay. That's it. Okay, Asuka, look at the screen here," he said, detaching it.

"Uh huh."

"Look. You can see the icon here. You can see that it looks like its head, yes?"

"Yes! It does! It has the light, and the flappy bits."

"Well, look. Underneath, it says 'Jeff'. That's its name."

"I can read, you know. I am four, after all.

"Only just," said Kyoko, with a smile, looking at the pair of them crouched down on the floor together, next to the small quadruped.

"That doesn't matter, Mama. The point is, I'm four, and only stupid people can't read properly. Look. J. E. F. F. Jeff. And next to it is G. R. I. D. Grid. And next to that..."

"Okay, Asuka," said Calvin. "I believe you. You're a really smart little girl, aren't you? Just like your Mama."

The girl blushed as red as her hair. "I'm not _that_ smart," she said. "Mama's like the smartest person in the world."

Kyoko coughed. "Well, I'm certainly in the top hundred," she said, with a smirk. "As are you, Cal. So it's not really a..." she shook her head. "Never mind."

"Anyway," continued Cal, "You just press that, right?"

"Uh huh."

"And then it activates. And you can press the buttons and make it do things, and you can teach it tricks. It's like a real dog, but it's smarter."

"Cool!"

"It is really nice, isn't it," Calvin said, with a self-satisfied grin. "It would take some kind of genius to design it, wouldn't it?"

He suddenly found a pair of arms fastened around his neck. "Thank you Uncle Cal! Thank you thank you thank you!"

He slowly detached her arms, and, standing up, tousled her hair. "I'm glad you like it, Asuka," he said, still smiling. "Now, can you just see if you can work out how to get it to talk to you, because I hid that feature in it. I'll be over here, talking to your Mama."

The two adults sat down at the side of the room, and watched the little girl, tongue sticking out, as she starting pressing buttons. There was a moment of silence. Then;

"How are you feeling, Kyoko?"

The red-haired woman shook her head. "Like I've got that kind of squirming feeling where you know that you're doing something that you shouldn't do, but also that you can't _not_ do it."

"I really don't quite get your objections," Calvin said. "You had no problems with doing it before."

"Yes, but as we get closer to the 24th, I suddenly realise what I'm staring in the face. Do I have the right to do it?"

"Yes."

Kyoko shook her head. "Oh, it's hopeless getting into ethical debates with you. You've just got this damnable certainty. It's one of your better traits."

The man smiled. "Why, thank you."

"I meant it seriously. From both my arcanobiological, and sorcerous training, I'm fully aware of how much of my reactions are determined by old evolutionary programming. It doesn't help at all. I mean, look at the last 13.4 seconds of data from Y... from the incident with Unit 01. She panicked." Kyoko sighed. "I hated her towards the end, but she didn't deserve that. No one does. Fear won't help me. And yet I'm scared." She cocked her head. "And I can't even drug those feelings into oblivion, because we found that the experimental test subjects in the test bodies responded... badly to that. How reassuring."

"Well... at least, I hope tonight can help calm you down a bit," said Calvin seriously, resting one hand on her shoulder. "This should be reassuring, make you feel more confident. That is, after all, why I persuaded Gendo to take you off the development team for the last week." He paused. "That man doesn't seemed to be concerned about another test."

"I know why you did that, because I needed time to prepare stuff. But, _mein Gott_, I wish I was working. I just get to sit here and worry, and try to hide things from Asuka. Obviously, I've had her at nursery in the day, because I don't want to break her routine, but the nights haven't been fun. There's only so long I can stare at my will without... hah... breaking my will. And you've been working all the time, too, so there hasn't even been..."

"We're sure we've found the problem with Unit 01, remember. We've got the enhanced LITAN handling animaneural integration, and we got Amunet to devise a new LCL-mix. And let's not even get into the ways that you're different from Yui."

"I... I suppose."

"Remember, we've made sure you've got an escape route from the Test which Yui didn't have. You'll be able to survive, if it all goes wrong."

"I know. I... I know."

"It will be fine."

There was silence, only broken by the slight mechanical whine of "Jeff", and the occasional squeals of "Look! Backflip!" and "Coo~oool!

"You'll look after her?" Kyoko said, her voice almost a whisper. "Won't you? If things go _really_ wrong, and _it_ doesn't work at all?"

"Of course," Calvin said, taking her hand, and staring into her eyes.

"It's almost time, isn't it?"

"Yes."

~'/|\'~


	8. Chapter 7: Die Brandrosenfürstin

**Chapter 7**

**Die Brandrosenfürstin / One hand she press'd upon that aching spot where beats the human heart,**

**ENTELECHY**

~'/|\'~

"_Our century is probably more religious than any other. How could it fail to be, with such problems to be solved? The only trouble is that it has not yet found a God it can adore."_

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin  
"Le Phénomène Humain"

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The Migou.

What were the Migou? What did they want? Why were they here? What, in fact, was their ultimate goal?

And, of course, how could one kill every last one of those fungoid, insectoid, Yuggothian _fuckers_?

These were all questions that the New Earth Government would really rather prefer that it knew the answers to. But, as knowledge was thin on the ground, too often it had to resort to guesswork and estimation, piecing together information from the pieces they could gather from mythology and misunderstood histories, from the extracted memories of the Nazzadi Firstborn, the generals of the Migou-built fleet, and from what had been gathered since the start of the Second Arcanotech War. Even the name 'Migou' was a misnomer, derived from misunderstandings of the tales of Tibetan peasants of a creature which bore resemblance to the yeti. That was quite eminently false; the white-furred, vaguely anthropic creatures native to Tibet were actually a result of the Leng Intrusion Zone there, leaking through and permitting the ingress of one of the denizens of that place, and not at all related to the Migou, although, in fairness, there were traces of what could have been their activity in those regions.

Where to begin, then?

Why, with what was known, of course.

The Migou, or Mi-go, were not an Earthly lifeform. It was likely that they did not even originate in the Sol system; evidence obtained from the ruins of the Elder Thing city in Antarctica, and what could be translated of the writings found there, showed what appeared to the arrival of beings which bore some resemblance to the kind of Migou most commonly encountered piloting crashed craft. That would put them as, by human standards, an incredibly ancient species; estimations from the strange, dateless rock used in the city put the images at somewhere between one and two billion years old. The resemblance was not exact, though, and it was debated whether they were truly the same species; even if they were, it was implausible that they would remain identical across these vast gulfs of time. Certainly, the modern Migou exhibited massive morphological variation, although the evidence was such that this appeared to be a deliberate, self-inflicted change. This hypothesis was backed up by their self-evident mastery of the biological sciences, and their pronounced proclivity for enhancing their servant-races. There were cybernetics which appeared to be grown from the body itself, rather than grafted in like human-made ones, massive neural rewiring, complete rebuilds of organ systems; the list of the accomplishments of their clinical genius was endless, and an object of subtle and not-so-subtle envy by New Earth Government scientists.

But, regardless of their origin, it was known that the Migou did possess holding outside of Sol, and they occupied most of the Oort Cloud. The vast cities of darkened Yuggoth, that place which mankind called "Pluto" riddled the fabric of the dwarf planet such that it was one vast habitat, and it was not alone. The flares of fusion drives, false stars in the night's sky, which had accompanied the start of Migou operations against Earth as they discarded long-held stealth, were proof of this. The industry required to build the billions of Nazzadi, quite apart from the invasion fleet itself, which had attacked in the First Arcanotech War, was proof of this. The way they valued their own much more than they did their drones or constructs, preferring to risk a division of manufactured Loyalist Nazzadi rather than a company-formation of Migou, was proof of this, for they held an unimaginable amount of territory in the Outer System, and corresponding amounts of resources. On the other hand, it was known that they had not historically ventured in even as far as Uranus, at least in any major numbers, for the human colonisation of the Solar System, in that brief _belle epoché_ of the 2040s and 2050s, had never found any trace of them; of other things, yes, strange and wondrous and terrifying things, but not of the Migou.

And perhaps because of this, the actual amount of Migou involvement in human affairs seemed to have been minimal. A few scattered contacts, a few peculiar corpses, never found for autopsy; they seemed to dissolve in less than a day, in what was suspected to be self-destruct mechanism. A few mad tales screamed by madmen in asylums after unpleasant encounters in remote areas. Nothing concrete. There had possibly been an upsurge in activity at the start of the twentieth century, but it had died down again by the time of the Second World War. The infamous Roswell Saucer was an urban legend, nothing more; rumours and tales blown into a mythology by the gales of human ingenuity and boredom.

And then one came to the Nazzadi. And they were a perplexing change in Migou behaviour. Built using archaic _Homo sapiens_ as the clay upon which the Migou sculpted their designs, they were sufficiently diverse that it suggested that there had been considerable genetic sampling. Despite the archaic, pre-agriculture base, there were extensive gene segments which had almost certainly been imported straight from modern humanity, to the extent that some of the original Nazzadi had been, according to the genetic tests, sufficiently Jewish to satisfy Reformist, if not Orthodox, believers. The evidence suggested that the Migou had effectively rebooted human evolution, taking elements that they liked from _Homo sapiens sapiens_, but systematically cleansing the gene lines of Outsider Taint. None of the original Nazzadi had any signs of Deep One heritage, necrophagic proclivities, or Tcho-Tcho taint, to name but three of the morphological incongruities which existed among modern mankind, and which the eugenics programmes of the New Earth Government were trying their best to cleanse.

The First Aracnotech War had been a war of control, not extermination. The black-skinned, red-eyed cousins of mankind had come _en masse_, but to colonise and subjugate, not necessarily extinguish. Even the tales that the Migou had programmed into the Nazzadi, memories implanted without events, had backed this up; mankind was nothing more than a renegade branch of a failed colonisation attempt by the slow, cyclic mass of the slower-than-light Nazzadi peoples, records and contact lost by the terrors of civil war. The Reclamation had been an attempt to retake a failed, renegade colony founded by a long-dead cruel empire. Habitable planets were rare, after all, and it was all for the greater good that the world be used by real people, literally, _nazzadi_, not the degenerate, wrong-skinned descendents of illegal miscegenation and genetic manipulation. Of course, those humans who had been interned in the Nazzadi "re-education" camps would not agree, but they would thank them, later.

Yes, the Migou had studied human history and human psychology well, for the internal justifications and self-belief were all too familiar.

The First Arcanotech War was widely agreed to have begun on the 16th of December, 2059, when the American Cressida research station, in orbit around Uranus, the furthest that mankind had reached into the system, was destroyed by pin-point accurate laser fire. History credits the deed to a light interdiction ship from the first of the three fleets, the _Nostalgy fer Solitudiny_ and five hundred million Nazzadi had cheered its name, as the lasered message had passed from ship to ship that the first blow of the Reclamation had been struck, even as the four billion inactive bodies of to-be colonists and soldiers slept in an undying sleep, packed densely into holds. And on Earth, still far enough away that the light from the destruction was still crawling its way there, over eight billion humans had more metaphorically slept on in peace, unknowing what was coming.

There had been no cheering, and no sleeping, in 2065, when two billion Nazzadi and four and a half billion humans had signed the peace treaty that had bought the war to an end. And had promptly splintered, as the nation-states which had allied under the New United Nations tried to go their separate ways, some rejecting the idea of peace with the Nazzadi while others made power plays for intact territory on the wrecked earth. There were also Nazzadi Loyalists still present on Earth; the combination of stealth technology, and the infinite-energy-finite-power of the D-Engine, meant that they could go worryingly long without resupply. The diamond fist of the nascent New Earth Government, growing out of the NUN, had enforced a new order for this changed world, in part using the assets of the now-surrendered Nazzadi fleet. Orbital insertions and strikes had decapitated any splinter faction which tried to oppose them. In an almost convulsive spasm of activity, rebuilding had begun, engineering projects beyond anything historically seen. Some might have been impressed by the wonders of ancient civilisation. The pyramids, the Parthenon, the Flavian Amphitheatre; they were nothing, as specks of dust to the arcologies which had desperately blossomed to repair a shattered civilisation.

And then, ten years later, the Migou had come again, against both the forces of mankind and their own renegade assets, and had swept orbit clean, bringing the so-called "Hive Ship" with them, a 1200 kilometre behemoth which dominated an entire hemisphere at once.

They showed that they had only given the Nazzadi trivialities, toys carefully designed to be marginally above human technological levels, such that should they fail, mankind would receive no extra boost. In an ironic inversion of popular culture, it was the bugs who were the elite, technologically superior, intelligent foes, against whom the swarms of humanity dashed themselves. The simple fact was that the fungoid creatures were smarter, tougher, more technologically and mystically advanced, and, by most objective measurements one care to name, just _better_ than humanity. But the New Earth Government had found that it was willing to go where the Migou would not. To dabble in things that the Migou chose not to know. Because they were desperate. Because they were ignorant.

Such was the Second Arcanotech War. Man versus Migou... and both of them against the _Others_.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**25th September, 2091**

Flat on her back, head aching, Lance Corporal Xuan Do dropped her rifle, and fumbled for the fallen seeker-launcher, staring up at the overexposed sky. It was tainted with silver, everything slightly misted by the emfog of micromachines and smaller nanological weapons which both sides pumped out. The thin, gritty layer which was starting to accumulate on every surface drained the colour from the world; a grey dust which removed red and green and blue and yellow alike, leaving only a greyed out world which was disturbingly similar to an arcanochromatically drained region. Accompanying it, unseen, waves of ECM flooded the electromagnetic spectrum, both sides trying to flood the areas which their foes used. Images and messages flashed and skipped along the inside of both her helmet and her Eyes, jolting and twisting. For a moment, the legionary LAI in her armour's systems flashed bright red, picking out a glowing red hit-box around a perfectly innocent piece of wall, before dancing away again. Crackles of static filled her ears. The launcher wasn't even giving her a response code, and she swore. The uplink ports on the fingers of her armour obviously weren't working, and she scrabbled at the wrist of right hand, trying to pull out the hard-link cable to physically hook it up to the smart micromissile system.

Her breath was shuddering, harsh under her helmet. Her new orders... she wasn't going to survive them. But she would still carry them out, because she _believed_.

What looked like a crack of lightning whipped overhead, the white-blue brightness forcing her filters opaque. The impact blew apart one of the trees which grew inside this ruined church, vaporising leaves and branches that strove to reach up and out, towards the light. Creeping vegetation growing up the walls of rotted, stinking, plaster-covered stone ignited, basking the rubble in a flickering light whose black smoke only added to the dust in the air. The patter of dust and shrapnel against her semi-powered armour was like rain, wet sounding patters against the hard plates. Rolling, beating, the woman tried to scrape the superheated material off, before the heat got too much even through her armour.

Besides her, the remnants of her fireteam lay. Though that was not quite accurate. Baguna and Rereny had been shot, yes, heads torn apart by neat clusters of rifle fire, but Nahuel had been hit in the chest by a seeker-scale explosive, and as a result was smeared around the inside of this ruined church. The splatter was largely red, though right around the blast, it had been burned to a brownish-blackish colour which, Xuan had been told, smelt like a mix of ozone, burnt hair, and overcooked pork.

Slowly, agonisingly slowly, the woman pulled herself along her back, trying to find a lower point in the cratered floor. There were both Migou, and Loyalist Elite out there, and she wasn't even in a true powered armour. She wouldn't be able to carry out her mission if she died in the same way that Nahuel had.

**[Reboot complete. WARNING! Corrupted files detected. Attempting auto-repair.]** Text began to scroll down in her left Eye, the red warning of several failures in the LAI.

"Cancel! Cancel! Cancel it!" she hissed at the AICS system in her armour. "Hide text overlay in Eyes, as well." The text, phantom images inserted by the circuitry which lived in-between the vat-grown, cybernetically enhanced tissue of her standard-issue Eyes, and the optical nerve she had been born with, vanished, and Xuan sighed. It was important that she know what was not working, true; it was also important that she be able to see, and have the LAI operating as best it could, rather than trying to autorepair. "LAI, check connection of Hornet HMLS."

**[Hardwired connection detected. Weapons system is slaved to smartlink. WARNING! Error: 550A-2. Without repair, functionality cannot be guaranteed. WARNING! Standard Interface Ports are offline. WARNING! Contact with Charlie Team lost. WARNING! Contact with Command lost. Trying to re-establish contact..."]**

"Shut the fuck up, Aches! Will it work?"

A pause, while a progress bar zipped across her Eyes. **[Smartlink is operational. Weapon is operational]** it 'answered' in the form of text, the weapon icon turning green.

The woman sighed in relief. "Good. Aches, exit diagnostic mode, go to combat mode."

The Limited Artificial Intelligence was silent, which was at least a small mercy, though it kept the red flashing icon up. Grinding, scraping, she managed to get as low as possible, and snaked her camera up, the smart fibre optic cable a much smaller target. What she saw made her swear.

She had been wrong. There weren't Loyalists or Migou out there. Well, if there were, she couldn't see them, which was alarming. But not as alarming on the gut-deep, visceral level, as what she saw was. The Migou were alien, cold, and inhuman. The Nazzadi Loyalists were their willing slaves, built by the Yuggothian fungoids as weapons to use against mankind. The majority may have defected at the end of the First Arcanotech War, as the subspecies discovered their origins, and had promptly slaughtered most of those who did not turn in the Nazzadi Civil War, but Loyalists still remained. They were bolstered further by fresh reinforcements, and the NEG believed that the Migou had set up forward growth vats in the Asteroid Belt. The Nazzadi Loyalist Elite, meanwhile, were a more recent appearance; while the normal Loyalists tended to use modernised variants of AW1 gear, the Elite aesthetic screamed of the design influences of the Migou, and the corresponding increase in lethality was a worry to anyone who saw them. They were still expendable, but they were a more valued asset, laden down with implants and enhancements.

But out there, were Combat Blanks.

Blanks. Men and women 'utilised' by the Migou, as infiltrators and soldiers alike.

Blanks. Any human or _amlati_ could be one, until you'd put them through the tests. And even then, you couldn't be sure, because the Migou and the NEG were engaged in a constantly escalating war of counter-intelligence and counter-counter-intelligence, so a near-infinite variety of Blanks existed.

Blanks. There was empty horror in the word, a horror that the Migou had deliberately chosen, for it had been given by the first captured examples. And it just made things worse.

These ones were Combat Blanks, too, not just Infiltrators. Infiltrators were basically base human, just... changed... in the head. Combat Blanks were more heavily modified. Fitted with many of the same enhancements the Loyalist Elite had, they were faster and stronger than a normal human being, their entire nervous system rebuilt for disassociated autonomous control. Shoot them in the head, and they did not die. Sever their limbs, and they would wirelessly control the integrated weapons. They were, naked, not dissimilar to an ultralight suit of powered armour, and _then_ they were fitted with stolen NEG or Migou-built gear. The energy for all their combat systems came from the tiny amount of antimatter contained within a magnetic bottle inside their chest, replacing useless organs, which meant that not one had been taken alive or intact for full scans. They blew up, if there was a risk of being compromised, so the NEG did not even know how the Migou did what they did to make them.

The three, slightly misshapen shapes in combat armour, bulked out by synthetic musculature and integrated weapons, and their helmets covered in bubo-like bulges of sensory equipment, were making their way towards the ruined church. With smooth, precise efficiency and perfect coordination, they were bounding between cover, covering all angles. Clutching her seeker closer, Xuan checked that all three targets were highlighted in red on her smartlink. The rifle wasn't going to do much against these kinds of things, but she could switch to the underslung seeker launcher on it when she ran out of ammunition for the dedicated launcher. Stay in cover, fire the seekers upwards, and let them home in. Sadly, these weren't proper anti-mecha seekers, just the lighter version issued to infantry for use on powered armour, Combat Blanks and Loyalists, and weren't a certain kill, especially if her smartlink wasn't working properly. Which it might not be.

No. She'd done everything she could here. She should pull out of these fortified church ruins, let the Migou have it, and re-establish contact with the NEGA forces. It would be clear to even the most blinkered officer that one person could not hold against three Combat Blanks. She'd be useless if she was dead.

"Contact with Command re-established," reported the AICS. "Codes are valid. Override patching you through."

Xuan's thoughts were turning to homicide. _They'd_ know, now that Command had forced contact. As if the Migou couldn't track a radio signal.

"Report in!" The voice of the Lieutenant in charge of her platoon was audible, even through the heavy encryption.

"Lance Corporal Xuan Do." She rattled off her code.

"Verified. Report."

"Rest of my team is KIA; I can confirm that. Hostiles advancing on my position; three Charlie Bravo Tangos, plus possible Loyalist or Bug units. Contact lost with Charlie Fireteam and Sergeant Bana; munitions detonation, I think." She paused. "No contact, but I think they're dead. They can't have survived that. Migou artillery got a precise hit on one of our ammo dumps."

"Understood." There was a pause. "We have the squirt from your armour... what there is. There's a major data loss, and a lot of error reports, can you confirm?"

"Yes, Lieutenant. The Migou were using some kind of AEW... maybe EMP, but that doesn't match the crash. Systems went down, and my AICS is running in safe mode, due to damage."

"Received." There was a pause. "Yes, that matches the feed. You're the forwards-most observer we have. Hold position, and observe. We're sending reinforcements. Keep in contact. Over and out."

"Understood, sir." Underneath her breath, she muttered curses, scuttling over on her stomach to a fresh position. She'd need to get higher, to see what was happening properly.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

This command centre was nearly identical to EuroHighCom, back in London-2. That was not surprising; these armoured bunkers were built to identical standards, after all.

"The Eidelon Combat Units are in position, Colonel Rury," reported the interface unit of COEUS, the Total Information Tactical Analysis Network component stationed here on the Eastern Front. Quite simply, its various interface components cut past a lot of the chain of command, to ensure that orders were transmitted accurately, and to connect the humans who were making and implementing the decisions. "Ready to move at your order."

The black-skinned, red-eyed woman nodded once. "Thank you, COEUS." She stared across the room, catching the eyes of a blue-eyed, blond woman in the identical uniform of a Colonel of the New Earth Government Army, who gave her a slight twitch of the corner of her mouth, almost unnoticeable, and a similarly small nod.

That was reassuring. As a member of the Special Weapons Division, it was necessary to maintain a good working relationship with the main chain of command, and the other woman was attached directly to Vice-Marshal Slavik's office. The Serbian Wolf was a good ally of the SWD, especially in the interdictine politicking which somehow managed to arise, even in a fight for species survival.

Shaking her head slightly, the _nazzady_ glanced back at the strategic map, which only existed for her as an image fed directly into her optic nerve by her Eyes. The New Earth Government forces were being pushed back, it was true. That damned Migou commando strike had taken out one of the anti-capital lasers, and the bugs were pushing this to their best advantage. With a few gestures, she zoomed in on the landing zones on the east of Nova Kakhovka. One... two... three Drone Ships were already on the ground, kilometre-long vessels positively loaded with Nazzadi, Blanked and Migou forces, and worryingly invisible to radar, and Orbital were tracking several more, with Swarm Ship escorts.

But it was imperative that they hold Nova Kakhovka. The city had been built by the long-dead Soviet Union for the construction of a nearby dam, the source of hydroelectricity inherited by Ukraine, a nation which had sprung up from the carcass of that superstate, and left to rot by the European Union, one of the superstates that had formed the core of the NEG. The D-Engine had crippled this city, as its invention removed the _raison d'etre_ for this place. Now it was an overgrown cemetery to progress, the trees and grasses having largely reclaimed rotting buildings and pot-holed streets. However, it was also useful as an airbase (the launch chutes dug deep under the city, into the sandy ground), and as a defensive hold-out. There were bases like this systematically placed all throughout Eastern Europe; some in the remains of old cities and towns, some built for this purpose, all designed as a weirdly trench-like counterpart to the so-called "Great War" of 175 years ago.

The calculus of warfare was quite simple. A capital-grade stationary defence could kill a capital ship, as they would always be better armoured and armed; they did, after all, not have to waste space, and limit their mass, due to the need to be mobile. Migou forces which came from orbit left their approaches obvious, and thus made themselves easy targets (and a high-atmosphere airburst nuclear weapon was an excellent way of ruining such a target's day), hence enemy reinforcements had to be landed in "safe" areas, and moved in. Space them out, give them sufficient defensive forces and anti-air/missile capabilities, and suddenly, mobile warfare bogged down.

And the Migou did the same, too; their own stationary weapons upon Earth's surface, their own smart-missile batteries, their own air-bases and underground facilities. The Contested Zone on the Eastern Front had barely changed in over four years. It had been static longer than the Western Front in the misnamed 'Great War', the "War to End All Wars".

The question was, of course, whether, if the equilibrium was disturbed, would it prove to have been stable, or unstable. Would a small change be negated, or reinforced by subsequent events?

"Falling back! We can't hold; multiple Mantises inbound, accompanied by... " there was an explosion, "... Silverfish. Get those cloaked bastards!" the voice yelled.

"Roger that. Regroup at Charlie-Zero-Nine. We have a squadron of Type-Hotel-Zero-Four-Fives dug in there, but they need more Papa Alpha support."

"Understood."

The blinking, dark-red icons of the Migou units were shifting forwards, the organic flows of the lines of control intensely disturbing. Marshall Hassan was sweating heavily, his olive-coloured skin grey with stress. Of course, it was probably a lot more stressful on the ground. Here, constant waves of the horrifically smart Migou missiles swept across a fortification, the ones which escaped the laser defences blasting deep holes into the massively reinforced walls, while dart-like submunitions targeted individual men. There, Loyalist forces clashed with NEG-forces, a bitter fight between the extant varieties of _Homo sapiens_, until the Migou-enhanced Loyalist Elite hammer could fall upon the hardest pockets of resistance. And there, the Migou units, perfectly coordinated despite the fact that no electromagnetic transmissions detected between individual units, systematically took apart the front line, blue-white flares and the burning sun-radiance of directed plasma weapons illuminating the day in horrible light.

Suddenly, a change. The dark-green of New Earth Government forces suddenly multiplied, as icons indicating power armour and mechanised units swarmed out from underground bunkers, some to reinforce areas under threat, some into areas already cleansed by Migou forces.

"Eidelon Brigade-Zero-Zero-Seven," Colonel Rury said, with a hint of pride in her voice. "Four and a half thousand soldiers; a proper mechanised formation. They have a company of G-Three Lilim serving in a command-and-control role." She leant forwards, her teeth in a predatory grin. "Didn't see that coming, did you, you fucking minions, and your bug masters?" she said, her comment directed at the hostile forces on the map. "Perhaps you should look underground better, before rushing forwards like that at a _tiny_ weakness in the line?" she added, rhetorically.

Marshall Hassan stared at the screen, running one hand over his shaven head. "That won't be enough," he muttered, before blinking heavily. "Where is the Navy?" he asked. "We won't be able to do anything, until they get capital support up, and we can stop the landing craft. We need to prepare for evacuation, should they take down the second cap-laser."

The blond woman stepped forwards and saluted, black-gloved hands a contrast to her pale skin. "Sir," she said with confidence.

"Yes, Colonel Kristos?"

"We have one capital unit on station, which is currently engaged in training exercises at Facility 2501. I had it moved up, when the anti-capital defences went down, and it is waiting for authorisation to deploy." She permitted herself a slight raise of her eyebrows, at the improbability of her own statement.

The man paled. "What... where? What do you mean?"

There might have been a look of disdain in Colonel Oxanna Kristos' eyes, as she kept her gaze locked on her nominal superior. "I'm afraid you don't have the clearance for that, sir," she said, her tone remaining professionally neutral. "Nor do you have the clearance to authorise deployment." She blinked. "I am merely informing you of this such that you are aware of the presence of friendly units." The woman bought up a menu, the gestures perfunctory. "The details and codes for the Unit have been added to your IFF database. I request that you confirm my authorisation to distribute them."

Marshal Hassan ran his gaze over the file. It was very, very short. "Bipedal acksebee organism, authorised to deploy tactical nuclear and arcanochromatic weapons, innate functions capable of replicating third-tier sorceries," he read in disbelief. "What? What is this?"

"It's a capital-grade ACXB organism. It's best to think of it as a corvette-scale Engel. And, I'm sorry, sir, but you aren't cleared for anything more. I have been authorised, if you see the notes in my file from Vice Marshal Slavik, to handle this operation with his authority," Colonel Kristos said, to head off the next objection, a faint smile creeping onto her lips. With a press, she transmitted the relevant files to COEUS, which the TITAN verified. She then disconnected from Marshal Hassan, before he could waste any more of her time, and opened up a separate channel.

"Captain Martello," she said, her voice dripping with pride, and a hint of anticipation, despite the dire situation. "Unleash Superbia."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The apartment block _disintegrated_ as the titanic greenish-grey shape smashed through it, hunched low. It was surrounded by the snap of superheated air, as laser fire emanated forth from every one of its surfaces. Its sudden appearance made it the target for everything that now had line of sight, and a hail of fire was promptly directed towards the bulk.

As it turned out, that was an unwise decision.

The behemoth paused for a moment, one colossal foot digging into the ground, as it turned on its heel and slammed the leg through a building in a sweeping kick which tore down the entire structure. Then it was off again, the noise of the damage which its path inflicted upon the grass-covered streets muted by the cataclysm which followed it and it mutely encouraged. If it cared at all about the Loyalist platoon which had been trying to set up in the now-ruined structure, there was no sign. Certainly, the artillery barrage which almost immediately streaked down from the heavens, upon the surviving hostile troops in their smashed-egg of a building, did not care.

West. The figure, its outer carapace mottled with five-branched tree-like markings, interlocking and interweaving, was heading west through shattered streets and ruined roads. For those who could see outside the human-visible spectrum, the titan was sprouting a hedgehog-like array of ultraviolet light, protruding out to touch anything which tried to harm it, fist-sized chunks devoured by whatever its invisible limbs touched. And then there were the blasts which rippled across those who survived that lethal caress; shrieking demons descending from the heavens at the orders of their master to detonate in explosive martyrdom. To target it, to inform the beast that you were aiming at it, was a death sentence.

In the skies above, human and Migou craft fought. It was not the brave, 'honourable' fights of the fighter ace; no, this was a conflict of technological supremacy. The men and women in the NEG air supremacy craft were massively rebuilt; new eyes and spines and hearts and lungs and tendons all there to allow them to sustain marginally higher accelerations, their senses jacked into the feeds of their craft, LAI systems performing the actual tasks while the human intellect merely guided this technological mess. And such a thing was necessary; even with these enhancements, the Migou craft were darting insects compared to the birds of humanity, albeit insects capable of slaughtering their foes. They could operate at the maximum thrust from their A-Pods, unheeded by the constraints of mammalian biology. They thought and fought in, at a minimum, three dimensions natively, and, of course, they were the technical superiors of mankind anyway. In this airspace, however, the NEG made up for it with numbers. The skies above the grey-green monstrosity were being kept clear, through both ground based systems, and the swallow-like fliers which emptied their racks of missiles before resorting to standoff laser fire. To those who had eyes to see, the thick clouds of emfog were lit in red, blue and ultraviolet by the violence of the conflict, swirling in chaotic vortices as the passage of craft and projectile alike tore through the clouds. Lower down, gunships and ground attack craft plucked victims from the mortal coil through missile and direct fire, even as they themselves were swatted by ground-fire.

Down below, the behemoth raised one hand, still charging inexorably along its path, and a sun-bright lance of plasma evaporated a hostile mecha squadron, the slicing cone boring into the ground without regard for the foes in the way. One colossal foot stepped over the radiant inferno it had created, the red-hot ground sagging and giving way into a new crater, before that obstacle was past. More stellar flares from its outreached arm, the air around it warped by the intense heat and _something_ else, marked its passage.

Somewhere along the monster's line of approach, a squadron of Loyalist Elite pilots waited, their mecha powered down and almost inactive. The Elder Sign-derived basilisk camouflage on the thing did nothing to stop a physical aim; they had ascertained valid firing solutions with ease. They were Nazzadi, after all, basically human; merely... enhanced, as befitted their function, and so that perplexing symbol had no effect on them. The implants in their brains and in their nervous systems made their movements impossibly smooth and precise, the minimum of effort utilised as they tracked the double-mounted charge beams into the ever-moving left knee of the grey-green shape. The targeting systems did the rest to maintain the hit. With a few thoughts, baseline Loyalists were dispatched to begin the diversionary strike. It had been calculated that they would fail, and unless they evacuated the launch sites as fast as possible, they would be caught in the efficient counterbattery fire. But what they would do is divert attention away from the less... expendable assets.

The Loyalist Elite, and through them, the Migou, found this aesthetically pleasing. They were, however, not foolish enough to let an appreciation for aesthetics induce tactically unsound methods, nor force them to show mercy.

But _it_ noticed them.

Twirling, the titan raised the implement of destruction it cradled in both hands, and, all four viridian eyes seemingly staring straight at the attempted ambush, eradicated them and a good proportion of the district they were stationed in. As the brief flash of the fireball faded, a cloud, discoloured by the arcanochromatic material within it, blossomed upwards. It was not quite a true mushroom cloud; the stem was insufficient for it to really be called that, and, indeed, it resembled nothing quite unlike a malformed, twisted rose, particulate petals shaped by the buildings at the edge of the blast which still stood.

_Through_ the superheated air and burning, tainted dust the greenish-grey figure ran, now smeared in black and grey tar-like dust. The clouds of its passage billowed behind it, drawn with it as a veil of shadows which swirled and hissed with the freezing gas it had secreted. A patter of tainted ice-dust fell like rain, as the two mixed, to splatter, freeze and burn nearby combatants, as the _thing_ passed. With a slight change in gait, it punted a heavy Loyalist mecha which had originally been part of the diversionary attack, sending the red jam-filled crushed tin can tumbling off far into the distance, and left its foe's compatriots behind, assured that they could not harm it.

Yes. A building was crushed underfoot. Yes. The behemoth was nearing its target. It was nearing its _prey_.

And then the four, utterly inhuman, viridian eyes fell upon the foe. It had been tracking it earlier, of course, through _other_ senses it had, but they were unreliable. The prey was illusive, after all, made of substances which made the 'sight' of its other eyes hazy, and furthermore it knew how to hide, how to camouflage itself in the electromagnetic mists of battle. It had set up cordons of defences, lesser beings to guard its concealed bulk from anything which might hunt it. They were heavily armed and armoured, machines that were to as gods to a naked ape.

They all died. They died in light and in heat and in colour, but they all died. Their feeble death throws scorched the surface of the behemoth, chipped into its unnaturally tough carapace, and were sometimes even simply negated by the shimmering crystalline iridescence of the air around the monster.

Futile. Utterly futile.

And, no emotion on its mask-like face, it aimed the tool of destruction it bore in its hands at the five hundred metre long landing ship, and fired. The rose-like blossom grew forth from the matt-black hull, spire-like weapons systems and extra armour melting like ice in a blast furnace as the thorns tore a vast swath of the ship away, boiling and broiling and swirling in unearthly radiance.

And, coddled in white freezing gas, the leviathan fired. Again. And again, until the broken spine of the kilometre long fallen craft was fully separated, its mechanical innards exposed to the air. Sheathing its weapon on its back, darting in, sun-bright plasma emanated from its hands to utterly slag those parts of the inside that had survived.

Pausing for a moment, for its task was done; the titan crouched in the red-hot remains of its slain prey. It was safe in the knowledge that such a bulk would allow it a moment's respite and concealment.

"Target destroyed," reported the pilot of the black-smeared green-grey monstrosity, her voice dripping with self-confidence. And more than a little hint of smugness. "Requesting new orders."

"New coordinates transmitted. Be aware, we have heavy hostile resistance in the area. We believe they may be trying to set up a beachhead cap-defence; it is necessary that you eliminate it or casualties will be severe when the Navy gets here. If it is operational, it will also be an active threat to you."

"Understood. It's doomed." The pilot flexed her fingers around her control yokes, the dark-red fabric which covered them moving perfectly in line with her skin, as she stared up at the change in force disposition on the map. "Gehirn, display status." The Ouranos LITAN obeyed, and she nodded, once. "No need for resupply, no real damage," she muttered. "Running a bit low on vECF, but, otherwise, plenty for all of them." Out loud, she added, "Command still has priority artillery authorisation slaved to you?"

"Yes, Test Pilot."

"Good." Evangelion Unit 02 rose again, Babylon already raised, and a barrage of cracks from the launchers on its back accompanied the resumption of its terrible advance. The booster trails of rockets kicked in once they were at a safe height, filled the sky, only for unseen cluster bombs to rain down again, seeking their prey. All it had taken was a thought, and an authorisation from the control yokes. And along her new path, a cascade of dusty orange-red explosions marked the way.

"Good," she said, hands barely twitching as she willed the Evangelion into motion once again.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Her semipowered armour was down to 36% battery, and caked in carbonised mud, as well as the somewhat less pleasant remains of the deceased Private Nahuel. She was bruised and battered. Even her Eyes ached. But nevertheless Lance Corporal Xuan Do was awake and alert; possibly more so than she had ever been.

_What... what the hell was that? I didn't know the New Earth Government had anything like that!_

Shaking her head, she focussed again, and stuck the fibre-optic cable out of the cover again, under a propped-up section of fallen roof, staring down at the casescreen on her lap. The parts of the camera network stationed around the building still alive weren't sufficient, and so she had to use her armour fibre-optic for this particular angle. She had a full launcher positioned in the remains of the aisle, elevated on its stand, staring up into the skies. In the launcher closer to her, there were two shots left, before she would have to go to reload it. That one was set up down the hallway, the command cable linked into the network which she and her squad had been setting up here before... before they had all died. The seeker, as a sort of hybrid micro-battery/missile launcher, the electrochemical propellant kicking the missile out of the launcher before the guidance system engaged, was exceptionally useful for this kind of indirect fire. She certainly liked the way that the firer didn't have to be too near the weapon. Something large and Migou, some disc-shaped lander, had crashed nearby, and she'd lost two launchers which she'd salvaged, when counterbattery fire had zeroed in on them.

Of course, if the first, targeted blast, which had taken out the other fireteam, hadn't hit the cache, this entire building would have been wired up with seeker sites. And not just the light, grenade-scale ones she had remaining; true anti-armour ones. And proper anti-air launchers, too. A dug-in squad, even if they were only in SP-armour, could slow down an advance no end.

But she was the only one left. The others were dead.

There. A standard three-man Loyalist powered armour squad, taking cover in one of the other ruined buildings, some kind of gutted apartment blackened by fire damage and covered in creeping ivy. The smooth, pseudo-organic lines of Nazzadi design were unmistakable, especially since the mecha used by the NEG had been hybridised with human aesthetics, and so had a certain utilitarian brutalism about them. Her smartlink flagged them with red outlines, extrapolating their positions from the glimpses she could get.

Her fingers danced on the casescreen on her lap. _Two shots on each of them, from Hornet-2. One HE, one Shaped. Don't want to risk them surviving... armour may be weaker in the head, but can't be sure it's a kill and they'll kill me if they find me. Synch the arrival times so one hits each one at the same time for the first wave._

_Yes. Sorry about this. And execute._ The woman let out a slight, almost crazed, giggle; alone as she was in a ruin, her squad dead around her. _In both senses of the word._

A sequence of six thuds hurled the seekers into the air, just another noise of conflict, lost in the immensity of this conflict. They were projectiles at this point, fired by the electrochemical launch packets, only guided by the small adjustments made by their unfolding fins. Crossing her fingers, Xuan watched their progress and arc on the feed in her left Eye, silently counting down in her head along with the decreasing number on the screen.

The thrusters of five of the six seekers fired at the same time, and the arc suddenly became guided, the dumb LAI systems in each missile acquiring the target fed from the smartlink and the launcher, before cutting all communications and running on their own visual systems. The sixth failed to ignite, and the dumb warhead continued on its parabolic arc, sure to overshoot by far.

From an outside observer's viewpoint, what could be seen was the streak of small comets, tracked by their flame-lit tails, which dropped down into the ruined apartment. The blast, a _whoompth_ of dust and rubble barely lit by the actual flames, rushed in a swirling cloud out of the ruins. There was a clatter of dislodged bricks, followed by a rumbling, as one of the walls gave way, sagging and falling inwards, the impact only knocking more dust into the air. If any of them had survived the hits, or, indeed, hadn't been hit at all, they were at least going to be seriously inconvenienced by the load-bearing wall that had just hit them,.

_Hah,_ she thought. _One of the advantages of being on foot. SP-armour can hide properly in ruins; true power armour can't. If I'd known the wall was that weak, I wouldn't have wasted those seekers._ She swallowed. _Need to reload first, before firing again._ Popping her case closed, and sticking it back in her pack, she scrambled on her hands and knees out from under the collapsed arch, over to the seeker, pulling off the magazine and making her slow way over to one of the armoured cases. There were still two shots left; it made more sense to reload the revolver-like cylinder from loose seekers, rather than slot a fresh one in.

Somewhere far overhead, there was a cluster of thunderous sonic booms, and a few seconds later, a ripple of blasts she could feel through the ground. Where those craft NEG, or Migou? She didn't know.

A crash of rubble behind her. With a sudden jerk of motion, spilling the seekers all over the floor with a clatter which left her wincing, Xuan swung around. Nothing. Rifle braced, gun-cam filling her left Eye, she slowly edged to the left, trying to get behind cover without lowering the weapon. _Rifle, or underslung seeker launcher? Not sure. Don't think it's a Papa Alpha, too quiet. Use the rifle._

Another series of blasts, outside. Very close this time. Too close; the pulse of air was a palpable force, and her left Eye wobbled as the weapon shook, even with the attempts of the AICS to keep the weapon steady.

Something moved, something over two metres tall, four blue eyes around a central orb staring from its blank mask-like head. A massively overengineered rifle was clutched in its arms, as it fluidly moved through the cover, far too quiet for something with that bulk. The woman just _knew_ without knowing that something of that size should be making more noise. She flicked her rifle to the seeker launcher, and aimed for the head.

A second one, also highlighted in green in her Eyes, could be seen moving behind it. Slowly, she lowered the rifle. They were New Earth Government units... not a model of powered armour she was familiar with, but her AICS was getting a match for the armour and the codes were valid. She had to hold fire. That didn't mean that they weren't compromised, of course; one of the terrors of the war against the Migou was the way that Blanked Infiltrators, if not detected, could turn on their comrades without a moment's hesitation, gunning them down with neither mercy nor pity. But the institutional paranoid this provoked could be just as harmful. It was a problem. Fortunately, it was unlikely that any entire squad would be Blanked and be able to slip under the detection processes; not impossible, but in the constant technological war between creation and detection for these saboteurs, the NEG's techniques had improved enough that the old-style total rewiring were demoted to Combat Blanks. They were just too overt, now. Of course, that didn't mean that there weren't Loyalists in captured, or Migou-made, human gear, and they _did_ come in squads.

Paranoia was a way of life.

There were more troops moving up behind them, engineering exosuits carrying anti-armour railgun turrets and seeker launchers, and the silent bulk of an IFV.

_Actual NEG reinforcements..._

Lance Corporal Xuan Do slumped down, shaking.

She... she wasn't actually dead yet.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The roughly disc-shaped craft was a wreck. It had ploughed into a young forest, in the middle of what had been an industrial park, leaving a trail of splintered wood behind it. It had eventually come to a rest in the middle of a twisted, rusted pile of metal, which might have once been some kind of storage silo; grain, perhaps, or maybe sand. Once, it had hung lazily in the air (or, in actuality, moved quickly to avoid hostile anti-air, only hovering when it was picking up or deploying assets); now, it was a mere sixty metre wide tombstone. The D-Engine was offline, the termination switch kicking in to prevent the crash from tearing open a dimensional rift, as the impact knocked vital components out of place. The A-Pods had been specifically targeted by the NEG; two of the three had been punctured by the same relativistic particle beam, and half the craft was a melted, slagged wreck because of that. The D-Fridges _had_ been working fine, but the Migou on board who had survived the crash had shut them down, because without the heat produced by the D-Engines, it was not necessary to maintain their functionality.

The snap of superheated air from a laser could be heard inside, to be joined by another, and another. There was a louder, more explosive noise from inside, and a brief gout of blue flame flared out, flaring through the outer hull.

"Bravo Command, this is Bravo Zero-Zero-Two-Three."

"Bravo Zero-Zero-Two-Three, this is Bravo Command Actual. You have boarded a Migou lander."

"Correct, Command Actual. This looks like a Bravo-Victor-0067-Sigma Field Conversion Ship. Zero-Zero-Two-One and Two-Two are KIA. Necessary security measures have been taken. Synchronising data."

"Roger, Zero-Zero-Two-Three." There was a pause. "The data is synchronised." Another pause. "Do not, repeat, _do not_ attempt an intact capture. We cannot salvage the craft at the present date. Cleanse and occupy, then hold position until we can get armoured units forwards. I'm sending Echo and Foxtrot squads to back you up."

"Roger, Command Actual." A pause. "There are Migou test subjects on board, in the standard fluid tanks. They appear to be recent captives, although they have had their IFF tags removed, and have been prepped for preliminary surgery. We have survivors, as well as corpses. Confirm 'Cleanse and Occupy' order. "

"Zero-Zero-Two-Three, do any appear to be Category Two Blank candidates?"

"Negative, Command Actual. We have a database match with standard Infilitrator prep."

"Roger. Order is confirmed, Zero-Zero-Two-Three. Cleanse and Occupy. The chance that any can be salvaged has been deemed negligible, compared to the security risk, and there is nothing new to learn."

"Roger, Cleanse and Occupy, Command Actual. Bravo Zero-Zero-Two-Three out."

It was trivial for a suit of self-powered armour to crush a human skull.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Well. That went fairly well." Colonel Rury of the SWD took a swig of coffee from the can, and winced slightly at the taste. Evidently, it wasn't displeasing enough to prevent a second sip, however. Well, she did have to start the paperwork for the Eidelon deployment, as there were things that LAIs couldn't do, and she didn't want to start on the Extended Operations Enhancement yet, so caffeine was going to have to do.

Colonel Kristos nodded, as she rummaged through her pockets. "Mhmrmph. Yes, I'd say so. At least relatively. It could have been a lot, lot worse, if they'd been able to push through, or even if they'd got those forwards defences up and running." She paused. "Chocolate or blueberry?" she asked herself. "Chocolate or blueberry?"

"Hmm?"

"Muffins." She leant forwards against the vending machine, staring at the confectionary through narrowed eyes.

"Can't stand chocolate, myself," the red-eyed woman said; a comment which produced rolled eyes, because it was not aiding with the muffin conundrum at all. "Mind you, don't really like blueberry much, either." She leant over to glance at the machine. "Oooh. Banana. I like banana."

"That's not helping, Rury." The staring match between the confectionary and the Colonel continued.

A pause.

"Congratulations on Eidelon, by the way," Oxanna said, her forehead now resting against the transparent front to the machine.

"_Zy aprecy_," Rury grinned. "And you, as well. That thing has real promise as a stiletto-force component. And... well, it's so _nice_ to have organic capital support, instead of waiting for the Navy to get dressed and ready before they show up."

"Oh, yes. That is after all why Anton's so interested in them."

Rury looked at her flatly. "Oxanna, I _do_ know about the links between... between the ACXBs."

The blond woman turned away from the muffins, and frowned for a moment, before smiling. "Oh, no, I meant Vice Marshall Slavik."

"Oh." The _nazzady_ tapped the side of her head with a finger. "Buh. Brain jam."

"I could have been clearer," the other woman shrugged.

"Just that, well, at the SWD we have to... interact with Miyakame a lot," she continued, in a tone which implied that such a thing was more frequent than she would have preferred.

"I do know, yes. I've had to deal with the man, too."

"Sorry."

Another pause.

Colonel Kristos growled. "Damn it, I'm getting both of them, and some proper chocolate as well. I can eat them on the way there, after all, and I'm hungry." She glanced at her colleague. "Don't raise your eyebrows at me like that."

"I didn't say anything."

"I know you didn't. And I know you have less... never mind." She shook her head, as she tapped in the numbers of the products, and then scanned the chip in the back of her hand.

"Say thanks to As... to Superbia for me," added Rury, as Oxanna knelt down, trying to fish the muffins out of the catch bay.

"'Kay. She'll certainly appreciate it," the blond said, with a slight glance upwards. "Well," she paused, "yes, we have a meeting with Hassan tomorrow. Together. Not going to be fun, is it?"

"Nope. He's such a _haranga_. And a haranguer." Rury shook her head. "See you there."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The warning sirens sounded, as Unit 02, sealed within a camouflaged transport container, was slowly moved into the decontamination bay. The 2501 training facility, designed for testing of units which could feasibly be deployed on the frontlines, was still considerably further back than any of the more forward bases, where the mainstay. The bay was cramped, designed for Engels, not their progenitor-project, and so the Evangelion only just fit. In the observation room, a man, his dark-red lab coat sealed all the way up to the high collar, pushed his old-fashioned, bulky argoggles up onto his forehead and pulled off a thick black control glove, to wipe his forehead. With a sigh, he removed the other glove, discarding them carelessly on the surface.

"What's up, Dr Schauderhaft?" a lieutenant, his face damp with sweat, asked the head scientist for the Unit 02 team.

The man shook his head. "She's so hard on it, Feucht," he said, running a hand through his sandy-blond hair. "I've been looking over the internal status feeds... we're going to have to replace the top few levels of mirrorgloss due to the fact that she chose to run _through_ an arcanochromatic blast cloud, and we're going to have to go through all the breaches to check for contamination. That's even before we get to actual battle damage."

"Ah," the younger man, Feucht, said, choosing not to say any more. He mopped at his forehead with a handkerchief.

Wilhelm Schauderhaft tapped his fingers against the diamond window. "Actually... it's not really even that," he admitted. "Captain Martello is pushing for increased deployment, and we can't sustain it. He can't get it into his head that the Evangelions are not ready for extended field deployment. They're a sensitive arcanocyberxenobiological organism, which require constant check-ups, and simply don't have the endurance of... of a frigate, say. Which is just armour plus D-Tech plus armaments plus a little bit of space for crew. You just can't do that and he doesn't _get_ it."

"Ah."

"I wonder if I could beat it into his head with a mallet," the chief scientist continued, his voice turning speculative. There was a pause. "That was a joke, by the way," he reassured the other man. "I don't intent to commit violence against the Deputy Director of Operations."

"I understand, sir."

Wilhelm sighed, a weary note entering his voice as he glanced at the uniformed man. "I'm not a 'sir'," he said.

"Would you prefer 'ma'am'?" the younger man said, in a deadpan.

There was a snort from the scientist. "Fair enough," he said, sliding his argoggles back over his eyes. "Gehirn, accept the hibernation plug as soon as the docking port is in place," he ordered the Evangelion's LITAN.

"Understood," the mechanical voice responded, the four green lights of its ARvatar bobbing slightly in acknowledgement.

Dr Schauderhaft had never understood why the Second Child had insisted on using such a crude, obviously non-human voice for her LITAN. There were plenty of other options she could have used. But, no, she insisted on using this slightly grating, synthetic one. He shrugged. Never mind.

"Dr Schauderhaft!" someone called from behind him. He knew _exactly_ who it was. "I need to talk to you!"

Come to think of it, she could be rather grating too. Maybe it was some kind of kinship.

Rather than turn to face her, he sat back down, and pulled his control gloves back on. "I'm listening," he said, in a tone which he hoped might imply that he was busy right now, and she might be better advised to talk to the local Deputy Director of Operations, Captain Martello.

Not to be dissuaded, the girl stepped around him, standing in front of his desk, left hand on hip. She would always be a little girl to him; after all, he had first met her when she had only just turned nine, when he had been transferred from the Unit 00 team to replace the near-total losses from Berlin-2. She had certainly changed since then, though. Clad in a mid-red version of one of the jump-suits that any mecha pilot wore when not in one of the dedicated interface suits (in her case, a plug suit), she loomed over him when he sat. Her reddish-blond hair was darkened by the fact it was still wet from the decontamination, hanging limply from where it was bound by her A-10 clips. Two blue eyes, their shape one of the few obvious signs of her mixed heritage, stared down at him over a face paled, like so many others, from lack of sun. The gaze was steady, level, and more than a little impatient.

She was tapping her foot. Peeling off the gloves again, the doctor kept his face calm, even attentive, even as he sighed internally. She would not give up, and it would just be easier to deal with her now, even though it was probable that the issues she was about to raise would be covered when he had looked over the data that, even now, she was delaying his work on.

Still, at least she wasn't the First Child.

Test Pilot Asuka Langley Soryu folded her arms in front of her, and nodded once. "The systems failed to adjust correctly to the loss of Torso-5's D-Fridge," she said in an accusatory tone. "Why, exactly, did it shut down T5's D-Engine, when there were no heat issues? I still had all the other T-series functional and intact at that point; you don't need to have it do that. It was only one DEV12 operating without a DDV13!"

"Asuka," Wilhelm began, "it's the precautionary principle. It's good to have precautions set up so that if things do go wrong, there's a margin for..."

"Precautions?" Asuka's nose wrinkled slightly in a sneer, as she leant forwards. "That's funny, I was under the impression that my _laser defence grids_ were an important precaution when operating against the Migou! Given that they give me my anti-infantry, anti-light-power-armour, and anti-missile defences!"

Running a hand through his hair, Dr noted that Lieutenant Feucht had already retreated. He was a lucky man. "Asuka," he began, "yes, I understand that a loss of an engine is going to be an inconvenience..."

"An inconvenience!" the girl snapped. She took a breath, composing herself, her tone turning icily polite. "Are you aware, Deputy Director of Science," she continued, "of what the loss of ten percent of my continuous operating power... and that would be gross power, not net power, because the limb sets are basically committed... are you aware of what that does to combat performance in a hot zone where there are enemy capital grade units!" Her icy politeness thawed. "I need my primary and secondary integrated weapons for the heavier hostile combat units, I have finite ammo for the Babylon which is needed for my objectives, and so, in a dense urban environment, and against the Migou, I _need_ my LDGs!" She took a deep breath. "Now, I can understand the loss of an Engine to enemy action. But the Engine was fine!"

Wilhelm did not sigh, because that would not help the situation. And not only because the sixteen-year old before him would certainly be able to beat him up. "Yes. The Engine may have been fine. It would not have been had it _melted_."

"Then I suggest that you find a way to make use of the extra capacity of the DDV13 over the DDV12, then?" Asuka replied, a sudden smirk on her face, as she tucked a wet lock of hair back. The red jumpsuit was darker, where it had been in contact with the hair. "Given that you chose not to upgrade the DEV12s when you did the DDVs."

The man with the dirty blond hair leant back in his chair, tapping the outside of one of his control gloves, idly. "We didn't switch to the DEV13s," he said, in a distracted tone, "because of the fact that we couldn't fit the extra bulk into the Eva. Organs in the way."

"Irrelevant," Asuka said, putting her hands on his desk. "That's wasted capacity in my Evangelion, Dr Schauderhaft. Wasted capacity that led to me getting," she pointed at the diagram of Unit 02, and the doctor lowed his argoggles to look at it too, "there... look at that cluster of hits, section 44ZZ, just under the right shoulderblade." The section was lit up red, craters dug into the armour, laser defence grid melted, the pale flesh of the Evangelion scabbed over by repair systems. "I took pretty much a Wasp squadron's worth of missiles there, and because the LDG wasn't working at 100%, some anti-corvette missiles got through." Her eyes were narrow. "And one hit before I could shift my AT-Field enough. I can show you the sympathetic burns," she added, turning slightly to show him the padding of bandages under her jumpsuit. "So deal with it."

The doctor nodded. "Yes, Asuka," he said, wincing slightly in empathic pain. No wonder she was in a bad mood. "I'm sorry, I was waiting for the black box and the data from Gehirn to get in. I didn't know."

"Okay," the girl replied, obviously slightly mollified. "In that case, I have more issues to raise, especially to do with the sluggishness in the right arm... did you shift the armour distribution there, closer to the hand? It's bad, and there's a sympathetic twinge in my wrist when I rotate it too fast... I think you're stressing my Eva too much. Not the same with the left, though, and you did the same there. So either there's asymmetry, or..."

Wilhelm raised a hand. "Asuka," he said, in a gentle, non-confrontational voice. "You should go eat. It's going to take us a while to read the data properly, even with Gehirn and a feed to the MAGI... they're busy with other things, too, so we're lower priority than normal, and we'll be able to understand your issues once we can sort out the battle damage from any other problems." He paused. "You did very well," he added. "But, right now," he could see on the AR images floating around her, from her implants, "...right now, you've got low blood sugar. You need to get something in your stomach, too."

Asuka smiled weakly, relaxing slightly. "I understand, Wilhelm," she said, face softening. "Yes. I've been in LCL for over fourteen continuous hours today. Because of that, decontamination was Grade Three, which _isn't_ fun. I took an anti-corvette missile bleedthrough to the back. Yes. I think I deserve some food, and," she pulled a lock of hair, and squeezed it, water running down her fingers "yes, a shower which doesn't involve UV washes."

"We'll probably be done with an initial report in about," the man looked at the clock on his desk, "... two hours. Check with me, and I'll tell you if you can come in. But... yes, food, relax," he ordered.

"Technically, that comes under Operations, not Science," the redhead pointed out. "I chose to comply because it is advantageous to me, not because you have the authority," she added, with a twitch of the corner of her mouth.

"You do that," Dr Schauderhaft said, his voice and face studiously neutral, before he smiled slightly, too. He pulled his control gloves back on, and, with a few gestures, checked how the auto-summary was doing.

With a shrug, lopsided from the presence of the bandages under her jumpsuit and the numbness in her rights side, Asuka strode out, on her way to the mess hall.

She wondered where Kaji was, what he was doing, and hoped that he had seen how good she had been today, and that, for his sake, he would have had a less painful day than she had.

Because, of course, she thought, smirking, this couldn't really be a bad day. No day that she got to add another strategic vessel icon to Unit 02's kill-count really could be. Sure, Drone Ships were less impressive than Swarm Ships, for all that they were larger, because they were merely heavily armoured transports, not capital ships, but still...

She threw a glance back at the grey-green, wounded shape of her precious Evangelion. Yes, another white marker for the black-painted hands of the Unit, those only bits of 02 that she was allowed to customise.

Her accomplishment.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Mass-produced N-Pop blared through the smoky bar. The computer-generated vocals were bland and uninspired, although, it should be noted, the harmonic synthesis of classical violins and the thin whistling of _gladisuharmoki_ did merge rather well with the lead singer's voice, especially if one's goal was to have problems hearing anyone saying anything at all, and possibly end up with a migraine. The dark-skinned man sat back in his seat, breathing out a long, draconic coil of smoke, before sucking in another breath through his cigarette. The man sitting on the other side of the table did not react, although the slight unconscious twitch in his nostrils possibly suggested that he did not appreciate this particular brand of cigarette. If that was true, it couldn't be seen in his carefree smile.

"... and, so, I know he knows you. I was wondering if you'd seen him recently."

The man with the cigarette snorted, coughing. "Yeah. 'Cause, you know, I really look like a tourist guide. Just search for him on the Grid, you know."

The blue-shirted man shook his head. "No Grid activity apart from some one-time pad encrypted pulses. No profile checks. No movement on transit networks." He smiled slightly. "Enough that he might be dead, and yet there's evidence that suggests he isn't."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes." The man shrugged. "Of course, if you're not going to be cooperative..."

The black man ran a hand over the top of his close-cropped head, and reached for the drink in front of him. Faster than he could do that, though, the man in the blue shirt leaned forwards, and covered the top of the drink with his palm.

"I know you saw him on the last day he appeared on any main Grid records, Alesandro," the man said calmly, with even a faint hint of a grin. "I know he met with you in this bar. I know he was very, very worried. I know he was more than a little drunk, and had opiates in his system as well. I know he tried to get emergency transport away from here, and I know you turned him down."

The man leaned back, and blew another cloud of smoke at the standing figure. "I know you know all these things, Mr Kaji. So, please, tell me why the GIA is interested in this man. After all, surely a vanishing like this is the affair of the FSB, or _maybe_ the OIS, if there's something suspect about it, not the GIA."

"Oh, I'm merely a concerned citizen," Ryoji Kaji said, with a slight flick of his ponytail.

"Suuu~uuure, you are," the cigarette-smoking man replied, with a role of his eyes. "Well, you know, I can't help you. I've already... hells, you already know everything I know about Charles Habegger. Yes, he was sort of floating around the base. Yes, he came to me in a panic. But, beyond that..." the man shrugged.

The GIA agent, Kaji slumped down into his seat. "I understand," he said, in a somewhat melancholy voice. "Damn." He shook his head. "I'll see myself out."

The cigarette smoking man snorted. "Yeah. You do that." He reached into his jacket, and Kaji froze, for just a moment, hand twitching. "Want one?" he asked, proffering the packet.

"You know my virtues, Alesandro," Kaji said with a grin, hand swooping in to take one.

"It's pronounced 'vices', Kaji," the man said, coughing. "And... now, shoo!"

Sitting back, Alesandro watched as the blue-shirted man left the building, strolling out with almost insulting casualness. With a sigh, he shook his head, and stretched his arms forwards, lit cigarette dancing a trail of bluish smoke in the air. There was a burst of swearing, as he accidentally knocked over his glass of beer, the smash as it rolled off the table loud even against the music. Pulling himself to his feet, he went in search for a cloth to clean up the mess.

An outside observer might have noticed the beer-soaked credit chit, loaded with the equivalent of two month's salary for a senior officer, tucked in the folded skin of his hand.

Alesandro hoped that Kaji would enjoy his cigarette _very_ much.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"She's a prodigy; that cannot be doubted." The man's voice was clipped, precise, conveying information with no revelation of his personal feelings. Only the very faintest hint of his native Spanish accent crept through. "It isn't exactly surprising; she has been in the Ashcroft 'Children' programme since its foundation, and was involved in its predecessor group, too, before that had to be bought to an end. That's twelve years of active training. Even with her youth taken into account, she's the most experienced ACXB combat pilot in NEG service currently... although heavy on the theory and simulator training, compared to an Engel pilot, who are, after all, actually front-line soldiers, and taken from the military before that. The fact remains, however, she's been training since _before_ there were Engels."

The room was dark, hollow; the presence of still air could be felt above and around, even though the edges of the room could not be seen. The glowing figures of men and women, sat or standing, were not Augmented Reality projections, but were instead holographic. The speaker did not know why they chose to do that, but it was not his place to argue. The arglasses perched on his olive-coloured nose were lit in green, relevant data for his presentation which nevertheless gave him a slightly sickly cast to his features.

"... which would be why she has lasted this long," interjected a _nazzady_, in a neat, pale blue suit, a hint of cynicism entering her voice. "Active field combat cannot be compared to long term training. The difference in conditions alone..."

"That is true," the bland-looking man admitted. "I should note, however, that she has been systematically and frequently exposed to extra-normal entities under controlled circumstances throughout her life, as a part of her desensitisation training. The stress induced by such exposures was suitably mitigated, after the events."

"And?" asked a blond man, leaning forwards, hands resting on the back of his neck. "What were the results of desensitisation?"

The first speaker nodded, instinctively tucking back a lock of black hair. "As covered, she has been an exceptional success in those regards. As it currently stands, her Instinctual Fear Responses to all the common ENEs are in the bottom two percentiles, and her Conscious Fear Responses are, although higher... as is common for the methods used on her... are eminently satisfactory. Moreover, she is nearly completely desensitised to actions against Loyalists or Blanks; her Bladdiov Empathy Value against targets identified as hostile is 0.11, plus or minus 0.03 points."

The blond man leant back. "That is... exceptional," he said softly. "Although... the impact on her long term psychological health?"

"Acceptable, by the standards which Ethics has set. The combination of neural plasticity, due to the youth at which the training started, along with the detachment which comes from the EFCS-2 ANW-interface, means that... well, may I speak freely, sir?"

"Yes. All the people here are cleared for whatever you know."

"Well, in that case, Project Ngoubou has been around since the old New United Nations. And that's before you get to our predecessor groups, because a lot of people have always been interested in how the human mind works, and why it responds to extra-normal things as it does. Herkunft, Moneta, the Army Psychological Counselling Department... they've all adopted some of our practices. Quite simply, the exposure to the ENEs, combined with the other practices, are repeatable, reproducible, and provide that all-important reduction in IFR scores across the board. With clearance, I can provide the proper papers, rather than have to explain it here. We know what we're doing, and with so long to work on someone, any errors can be corrected in a way that the standard Army six month Desensitisation Programmes simply cannot."

"Thank you," said the _nazzady_. "We will take that offer up. Although," she added, as if the idea was only just striking her, "is it not true that Project Ngoubou started as a NUN Project, from A-War 1, specifically set up to extract information from captured hostiles? Should such a group really be..."

"No, ma'am," the bland man said, shaking his head. "The Project was merely repurposed in wartime. Specialists in extranormal, and thus, inevitably, xenobiological psychology were needed, after all, and one of the major pre-A-War tasks of the Project was building a psychological parallel to Professor Fuyutsuki's work on ghoul physiology. When there is an 'alien'," the click of the inverted commas around the word was palpably audible, "species, it is inevitable that anyone of any use is called upon."

The red-eyed woman nodded. "I see. That makes sense. I was merely curious about what I had heard about your group."

The man shifted slightly, smart grey jacket tight against his body. "No, ma'am; we are a Project, not a Group," he said.

She sighed. "Small 'G'."

"Oh, I apologise. Is there anything else, or is that all?"

"For the moment, yes," the blond man said, his hologram vanishing, along with the others, leaving only those who were really there. The bland man who had been speaking, and a woman in her mid-twenties, shaven-headed and pale skinned, a barcode obvious against her scalp.

And as she took a few steps towards the man, there was something obviously _wrong_ about how she moved. Maybe a stroke, maybe something else, but she stuttered and jolted, the flow of human movement inconstant and broken. A sudden burst of speed moved a leg, and then it coasted; her entire gait held by pulses of muscular motion. Her face was sweaty, and now that she got closer, the paleness did not seem to come solely from her natural appearance, but instead from some kind of nausea or sickness.

"Ma'am. I... I did not expect you to be watching. Was that deemed satisfactory?" the man asked, suddenly looking worried. "Was I not my best?"

Red spoke.

"Y-y-yessss. It... was s-s-satisfactory. I was on-ly here in a... m-m-monitoring capacity, after all. J-j-just to check that our... trust in you wasssss well pla-ced."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Please roll up your sleeve," the white-clad medical orderly said. Xuan complied, wincing slightly as she looked away from the needle descending towards her arm.

The orderly smiled, his teeth sparkling white. "Don't like the sight of your own blood, eh?" he asked, the blue light of harcontacts overlaid on his eyes as the small camera on his headgear fed him the location of her veins.

Xuan winced. "Not really," she admitted. "I don't like needles much. Why can't you just use the standard scrapers for the check?"

"Because this isn't a DNA check, Corporal. We've already checked that you are who you claim to be, and you haven't picked up any gene-carried taint. This is a medical procedure, to check for other forms of contamination... also," he added, checking the files superimposed on his eyes, "you did have a suit puncture. Can't be too careful. After that, we've just got the ANI map, the nervous system tests, and the CAT scan for the neurological Blank structures, before we can send you off to Mental, for a psychological analysis." He shook his head. "Okay, just relax and look away... it's just a small amount of blood..."

The woman groaned, turning away. She still winced, as the needle went into her arm.

"There," the man said, a few moments later, as he stepped over to the machinery . "That wasn't so bad."

Xuan merely grunted at him.

"It's funny how people react differently," the man said, as he drummed his fingers on the side, watching as the test sample was lowered into the bulk of the machine.

The woman swallowed. "I think it hasn't really sunk in yet," she said, her voice slightly muffled. "I mean... I keep on expecting to see them again."

The man paused. "I was actually talking about people and blood tests," he said, hastily. "I mean, there are some people who don't mind having needles stuck into them, but go green at the thought of seeing someone else, and the opposite, and then the other mixes."

"Oh." Xuan forced a smile onto her face. "So... heh... what are you?"

"Me? I don't really care. Go through med school, and any dislike of needles will be gone, you know," the man said. "I was... well, not terrified of them, but I didn't _like_ them before..."

That was when the alarm sounded, the raucous squawking accompanied by red lights illuminating the white of the lab in scarlet. At the exact same moment, something rocked the seat Xuan was sitting on, an all-too-familiar thump which pulsed through her backside.

Immediately, she was down onto the ground, rolling under the bed with muscle memory which overrode consciousness. She could recognise an explosion, after all.

"What the hell!" the orderly yelled, flinching back.

_Code Amber Alert! All personnel report to their stations. Evacuate Hangars 012, 013, 014, 015, 016, immediately. All personnel in proximity to those locations should ensure that they are wearing full ANaMiNBC protective gear._

And interspersed with the announcement was the emergence of a crackle of distant gunfire.

"What the fuck!" the man added, hysteria entering his tone. Pulling himself back up to a fully standing position, he rushed over to one of the green-painted cabinets in the room, and stuck his hand against the memomorph lock, fingers twitching as the skin samples were taken. The machine was evidently satisfied, as the front of the cabinet flowed away, to reveal a standard emergency cache. The man grabbed one LAR-18 carbine for himself, and, after a moment's hesitation, tossed one of the light weapons to Xuan, who caught it smoothly.

Technically, he shouldn't have been doing that at all. She hadn't passed the checks run on any solider who had experienced a combat incident with Migou forces, so she wasn't allowed to carry a weapon on base. But... hells, she wasn't going to raise it, if he was going to throw her a gun. It would make things a lot easier if she were armed.

"I need ammo to actually use this," she pointed out; two magazines were passed, to make it an actually-useable weapon. She could see that he was looking at her with slightly dubious eyes, weapon clutched close to him in a position such that it could be raised if it was needed, as she checked the weapon, before sliding in one of the two magazines, and prepping it.

"You know what you're doing, yes?"

She nodded, and he could be seen to relax slightly. That didn't comfort her much.

Xuan swallowed. "Alright... erm. Oh God, I can't even remember your name."

The man flashed his sparkling white teeth at her in the dimmed lighting. "Corporal Janckowski. Marek Janckowsk, Medical Corps."

_That was more information than I really needed,_ Xuan thought, a hint of irritation in her voice, which was quickly removed by the scream which sounded just outside the room. She clutched the rifle tighter, and internally let off a cluster of curses at the fact that this was both lacking a smartlink, and chronically underpowered, by the standards she was used to. Infantry in semi-powered armour carried weapons which would probably leave a person firing them normally with hideously bruised shoulders, if they were lucky. This... this one, a 5mm carbine, was the kind of thing that the Dagonite fish-fuckers used, and got rightfully slaughtered by a modern military force for doing so; something combat and small and which probably wouldn't even stagger a Loyalist Papa-Alpha, even with a direct joint hit.

She could only hope that this was only an Infiltrator Blank, rather than one built for combat, or anything worse. Because if it was anywhere above baseline, or had any integral Migou weapons, then things were going to go badly for her.

Raising one hand, she gestured for Marek to wait. Reaching out with one hand, muscles aching with deliberate slowness, she rested her bare palm against the door handle. Then, taking a breath, she eased it down, pushing slightly, just enough to have it swinging freely. She gestured at Marek to cut the lights in the infirmary; it wouldn't be a good idea to be silhouetted here, and every little advantage would count.

_I wish I had my FO-cable with me_, she thought, anger in her mental voice. _I hate going in blind._

And with that thought, she gave the door a hard shove with her foot, keeping her back against the doorframe. Trying to expose herself as little as possible, she flowed into the room, clearing the danger of the open doorway door as fast as she could. Carbine raised, her gaze flipped between the persons decorating the interior of the antechamber, the corpses sprawled around, unarmoured figures mutilated by the ferocity of the assault, and the flickering from the cracked light above, the ceiling indented, as if something had been thrown into it. No one, no _thing_ was standing upright in the room.

Slowly, leading her way forwards, step-by-step, Jancowski behind her, Xuan kept her gun trained on the door opposite to her. To be more precise, she kept her aim trained on where it had been, because the attack had left it splintered and shattered on the floor.

"Check them!" she ordered the man, gaze not shifting. "See for survivors."

"Too recent for thermals," Jancowski muttered, "don't have heartbeat sensor with me. Triage, triage, triage." He swallowed, the air coppery in the mess. "You... you have the doorway covered?"

"Do it!" she barked, gaze still not moving. "We might be able to save some of them."

There was the sound of metal hitting wet meat behind her, and something thudded on the ground.

_We didn't check the bodies_, Xuan thought, as she swirled, gun raised, pointed at the Blank who had its hands around the medical orderly's throat. It was a female body, and Heavy Combat Infantry, too, but that didn't matter now. It was a Blank. Except in the fact that the underskin armour and enhanced musculature of a HCI soldier would make things harder, and would also explain how a Blank got so far in. The rifle chattered, and she fought to keep it level, bullets punching through the unarmoured man it held as a shield and into the Blank. The desensitisation training, among other things, tried to teach you to ignore the "human hostage" reflex.

Who remained intact enough to throw Jancowski at her, the slam of his bulk bowling her to the ground and the rest of the shots spraying wide. Up above, the light shattered, casting the anteroom into the dimly-lit red of emergency lighting.

Not that it affected either of the combatants overly; both had NEG-construction Eyes, and whatever the Blank had on top of that.

Xuan groaned, and, gritting her teeth, tried to stop the world from spinning. _Fuck, fuck, fuck!_ she thought, as she rolled out from under the bleeding corpse, and scrabbled for her empty carbine. _It's an HCI, I'm just a combat engineer. It's faster, stronger, and more armoured than me. Any plan than involves me having to fight something like that unarmed is a bad plan. What to... urk_.

Her chain of thought was suddenly interrupted, as the Blank, bleeding from multiple impacts, her skin a strangely smooth texture from the subdermal plating of a HCI, reached down, and grabbed her neck. The thing hoisted Xuan up to thrash and kick, her attempts to get. The woman could _feel_ her spine creak and grate, agonising spikes shooting up and down her neck. Little black dots started to dance in front of her Eyes, and Xuan was suddenly aware of how little time she had.

A left heel, swung back into where she guessed the kneecap of the Blank was, managed to connect, and the reprogrammed woman staggered backwards. HCI implants didn't have the solid plating around the joints, and so a military boot could still harm. And the combination of the mass of all the Blank's plating, and the fact that she was trying to snap Xuan's neck meant that they went down together. Furniture splintered as the Blank crashed down, its head impacting with a solid noise not entirely unlike a dropped bowling ball, and the Lance Corporal screamed in pain, as her ankle was crushed by the mass.

Still, she still had the empty carbine close to hand. No bullets, but any leverage was good, she thought, as she pulled herself out from under the heavy body, stress-given strength enough to push it off. Forcing the pain from her ankle away, teeth forced together in a screaming grin, she slammed the butt of the weapon into the right Eye of the Blank, rupturing the hard surface and tearing a chunk of flesh off the woman's face, as it ricocheted off the hardened plates. The thing thrashed and writhed, so the second blow went into windpipe; armoured, yes, but still vulnerable to sufficient force. It wasn't striking back now, just lying there, taking each blow.

Screaming, swearing, sweating, Xuan Do smashed the light carbine into the throat again and again, the lightweight plastics splintering, smeared in crimson, which suddenly went bright red when a major artery was ruptured, gushing forth from one of the flexible joints.

Xuan didn't stop. If asked later, she would have claimed that she couldn't be sure that this was just an Infiltrator, that it might have been a Combat Blank of some form, and thus not merely a mentally-rewired human, and so she needed to do as much damage as possible. But, to be frank, that was not what was passing through her mind.

There was a noise behind her, followed by the sharp pain of a stun baton thrust into her back. People were shouting, and the pain in her ankle was even worse. It was standard protocol; they couldn't be sure that she wasn't compromised, that this wasn't some kind of Migou false-flag operation, to get them to trust one Blank for taking down another, to allow them to accomplish their objective. She was going straight for a neural scan, to see if she was a Blank. It made sense.

But as she convulsed on the floor, muscles spasming, her only rational, as opposed to pain-induced, thought was that she needed to damn well get a medal for this to be all worth it.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Asuka?"

The reddish-blond girl, her now-dry hair swept back with the two A10 superconducting QUI Devices holding it in place, stiffened, standing to attention. "Colonel," she said in response, turning to face the older woman. Actually, technically, she was looking down at her, but only in a physical sense; quite the opposite was true in a social sense.

Colonel Kristos followed where the girl had been looking, before her interruption. Already, the hordes of red-exosuited workers and car-sized drones which swarmed around Unit 02 had stripped away the contaminated upper layers of armour. Now, the titan stood in the chamber, almost perfectly reflective, as the layers of mirrorgloss, designed to minimise damage from the ubiquitous laser weapons of the strange aeon, were exposed to the air. In the white of the chamber, the workers were strange, distorted red shapes reflected in the war machine, the only distinction on the smooth surface being the bubbled and warped sections where the upper layers had been damaged by the action.

It was a mundane sight to anyone experienced with the necessities of maintenance.

Oxanna permitted herself a short, mono-shouldered shrug, and turned her attention back to the girl. "How are you feeling?" she asked.

"A little annoyed," Asuka admitted, after a calculating glance at the black-uniformed woman. "I made some stupid mistakes out there."

The blond woman raised her eyebrows at that. "I was actually talking about your back... but I don't believe you did."

"The fact that I have," she reached over her shoulder, to point at the region around her right shoulder blade, "_this_ is a sign that I made a mistake. I should have done better." She shook her head, hair flicking in a tight controlled arc. "That was too close to the entry plug. And the pilot is the primary point of failure in an Evangelion."

"Asuka," Oxanna said, with a small smile in her voice, "you personally took down two Drone Ships, and a capital-grade charge beam and its attached lander today. Errors are inevitable on actual battlefields, and you made few enough that they can be fixed." She watched as the girl relaxed slightly. "Less than your opponents made, certainly," she added.

"That doesn't mean what I said wasn't true," Asuka said, blinking once, those blue Eyes staring at the Colonel. "I know I'm the best pilot there is, but the fact is, compared to the Evangelion organism or the cybernetics in the machine, anyone is weak... prone to failure."

Colonel Kistos restrained a sigh, running a hand down the sleeve of her black uniform. "Asuka... is this about the adrenal system or neurachem modifications again?"

The girl just stared at her, a look in her eyes which seemed far too old for her sixteen-year old body.

"Those are alterations which neither the NEGA Biomorality Board, nor the Ashcroft Representative for Ethics, will sanction. You know this. You're still maturing, and we can't risk the endocrinal or neurological damage that might result." She held Asuka's gaze. "You are too valuable as a pilot now to risk that."

"I wasn't fast enough today," Asuka said, flatly. "I didn't notice the second squadron of Wasps flanking me, so I got hit. I _did_ notice the launch, but if I'd been faster, I'd have been able to switch LDG priority back. And because of that, the Eva got damaged, I got hurt, and I lost several secondary weapons systems. My body just can't live up to what my mind wants to do, so I need it to be better." She put her hands on her hips. "You don't understand. I am the best Evangelion pilot that you can get. And it still isn't enough."

The older woman did sigh then, adjusting her black beret. "Listen to me, Asuka," she said. "I think you are forgetting just how exceptional your achievements are, and just how much more time you have. We... that's the Army speaking here... don't intend to deploy you as a proper field unit until you have a proper commission, and that won't be until you can legally get one. Today was an emergency; I had you pulled forwards, because it was that, or risk a breakthrough at Nova Kakhovka. And," her face softened slightly, "I know there have been emergencies in the past as well, and live fire combat tests, but you are not a field-active pilot at the moment. You are a Test Pilot for the first Mass Production model of a series of experimental arcanocyberxenobiological combat units. And you are _amazing_ at it."

She could see the girl's jawline tighten slightly, before loosening again, breaking into a confident smile. "I can be sure you mean that, Oxanna," Asuka said. "I know you'd tell me if I wasn't good enough."

"... and have, in the past," the older woman said.

"Which is why I can trust you with these things," Asuka agreed. "Not like that idiot Malvolio," she added, in a darker voice. "Always telling me that I'm 'good enough'. No one can ever be 'good enough'; you always, _always_ can do better. I can't tell if he's someone's sycophant, or just an idiot."

There was a pause, as they watched the teams strip away one of the empty seeker launchers, its rails utterly warped and melted by an impact from a Migou plasma weapon.

"Could be both," Oxanna suggested.

"Good point," Asuka said, with a smirk.

"She's right, you know," a voice said from behind the pair, making them both jump slightly. "Not about Captain Martello, because as a neutral observer I cannot..." and that was about as far he got, before he had to save his breath for dodging a ballistic sixteen-year old, and her guided hug. Deploying countermeasures such as a worried look proved to be eminently ineffectual, and he was finally forced to mitigate the damage by keeping the embrace chaste, and brief. It would be rude to try to dodge it with his full capacities, after all; the girl would be offended, and that would just be unnecessarily mean.

"Didn't you see what I did today!" Asuka asked the newcomer, her voice suddenly a lot more girlish. "Wasn't I amazing?"

Ryoji Kaji smiled, and stepped back, disentangling one of her limbs as he did. "I've only looked over the reports, but, yes, Asuka, you did very well." The man from the Global Intelligence Agency turned, and smiled at the Colonel. "Debriefing her, are you, Oxanna?"

"That's largely been done already, Ryoji," Colonel Kristos said back, matching his smile.

The man frowned. "I have to say, I just thought it was going to be a training exercise today," he admitted, raising his eyebrows at the military woman.

"So did I," admitted Oxanna. "And that was what it was meant to be. I had to move Unit 02 up from 2501 to Nova Kakhovka because otherwise we'd have had a line collapse. The bugs managed to take out one of the anti-cap lasers there, and... well, you know the rest."

He knew the rest.

"So, did you do anything exciting, today?" Asuka asked him, still holding onto one of his hands. "Hunt down and kill a horde of Dagonite cultists, or maybe thwart the evil goals of a traitor to humanity? Did you use any good one-liners as you shot anyone?" Her eyes were sparkling.

Kaji sighed. "Honestly, no. I'm not a field agent anymore, as I _have_ told you. Most of my job involves paperwork. Although..." he stroked his unshaven chin, "perhaps you would be interested in my valiant bravery against a most dreadful foe."

"Sure!"

Oxanna rolled her eyes. "Why not? Although, if this turns out to be the story of the black-and-white-armoured pilot in the black-and-white Blizzard... well, I do have a loaded gun."

The man's face fell, in a comic overreaction. "Well, looks like the nice lady from the Army has just _de facto_ classified my work," he said.

"Oh, well," said Asuka, a sly smile creeping onto her face. "Well, that's a shame. I suppose we should go home now, because I've done pretty much everything I need to, haven't I, Oxanna?"

The Colonel nodded. "I think that's fine," she said, Eyes flicking for a moment, as she checked her PCPU. "Yes. Be careful with her," she told Kaji, in a warning tone, "she took sympathetic burns from ordinance to the back of Unit 02. The medichines managed to stabilise them in-plug, and they've been treated, but..."

Kaji nodded, face momentarily serious, before he smiled again. "I've got the car outside, Asuka," he said. "We can leave now, if you want?"

The girl considered it. "Can we get something to eat on the way home?" she asked. "I needed a Level 3 Decontamination, and so... well, I've eaten since then, but there's a lot of eating to make up for." She rolled her eyes. "I'll never end up fat, if that keeps on happening."

"Yeah." The man paused. "Actually," he admitted, "I'm kinda hungry too. I had to skip lunch. Where do you want to go..."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The table in the apartment was heaped with plastic containers. Within these mounds could be seen rice, noodles, and all sorts of protein and woven vegetable substitute floating in various sauces. The iridescent colours of this alchemical mess would have driven ancient peoples into awe, at such wonder and light in the world. Also, there were prawn crackers.

They were having Chinese.

"Don't take all the egg-fried rice," Kaji warned Asuka, who was shovelling it from the container to her plate in vast amounts.

Her eyes momentarily narrowed, before returning wide and innocent. "But, Kaa~aaji," she said, flicking her head slightly, "I was piloting today, and had to go through decontamination. You know that always makes me feel like I haven't eaten in _ages_. I'm actually really, really hungry... and, yes, I know I've already eaten, but one meal isn't enough."

"I know," the man said, "but, just try not to take it all. I like it, too. I mean, no one's touched the chicken chow mein yet."

She screwed up her face. "Not in the mood for that."

"You normally like it." That was said in a joking tone.

A shrug, followed by a wince, as a jolt of pain came from the sympathetic burn on her back.

"That reminds me," Kaji said. "I got you a present." He watched as her eyes lit up at that remark.

"What is it?" Asuka asked, with a hint of hunger in her voice. "Although, of course, you really shouldn't have," she added, hastily. "But what is it? What is it?"

"I managed to get you the action-reports from the Harbinger-4 incident," the man said in a deliberately casual tone, before biting into a prawn cracker. For all her talents, Asuka really wasn't that good at feigning disinterest.

"Thank you, Kaji," she said, in what he was pretty sure could accurately be described as a squeal. She leant forwards, and he resolutely kept his eyes upwards. "What can I do to repay you?" Asuka said, in what he thought was meant to be a seductive tone. From his perspective, it was a failure.

"You can pass me the soy sauce," he suggested, watching the faint flicker of disappointment warring against the ecstasy, before being resolutely crushed.

"Well," the reddish-blond girl said, as she passed the aforementioned condiment, "thank you. A lot. Really." Her hand hovered over her own plate for a moment.

Kaji smiled. "Yes, Asuka, you can go watch them right now." He dug a hand into his pocket, and withdrew a storage chip. "It's locked, so you can't copy it, and... well, you know how classified everything Eva-related is."

"Understood," Asuka nodded, picking up her plate, and adding a few more things to it for good measure. "If you'll excuse me..."

"You are excused," Kaji said, gravely, his face twisted into a grotesque mask of 'reasonable authority figure'. It looked rather comic on him. He shook his head, as Asuka disappeared into the next room.

It took less than an hour, as he cleaned up the table (there had been several distracting calls from his superiors, so the last parts of the meal had been cold), for the laughter to start. And it wasn't nice laughter; he could hear the contempt dripping from it. Depositing the plates in the sink, he poked his head into the living room.

Augmented Reality interface before her, Asuka was working her way through the autocensored footage from Unit 01 and surrounding units. At the moment, she had the same image of Unit 01, from multiple angles paused. With a finger poke, she set it to play again.

On the screen before him, from multiple angles, the grey-blue figure of Unit 01 fired its Babylon in one hand. The structural diagram to her right, complete with flashing red, showed the consequence of that decision, as fractures propagated up the

"Useless," Asuka proclaimed, mirth fighting with superiority. "What an idiot."

"Really?" Kaji asked. From his point of view, it had looked fairly impressive.

There was almost a faint hint of pity in the stare she directed at him, quite unlike her normal interactions with him, before her normal exterior returned. "Yes. Complete and utter idiot." She shook her head, hair whipping behind her. "Seriously, what kind of an imbecile tries to fire a Babylon with one hand, and hasn't even grasped the concept of bracing yourself with your AT-Field?" She paused. "Well, this Third Child, obviously. _Mein Gott_, I can't believe he passed the handling tests to even qualify. I mean... arggh! It'd be like trying to fire a man-sized rifle without bracing it." The disgust on her face was evident. "If someone like him is piloting... they must be desperate. Or stupid. Facility 0343 needs to get Unit 03 ready, so someone competent can pilot, even if they have to ship them all the way from Australia."

"And yet he's managed to eliminate two Harbinger-level threats," Kaji pointed out, mildly.

"Hardly," Asuka snapped. "Asherah; he lost control, and the Eva did it. And Eshmun... that doesn't count as a kill! The Army and Navy had already blown it in half. That's... that's like half a kill, at most." She crossed her arms. "And he should lose points for getting so damaged both times."

"So there's a point system now?"

"There should be!"

The man stroked his chin. "Aren't you a little harsh on him, Asuka?" he asked.

"Hardly! I'd say, the problem with him is that whoever's been responsible for his training hasn't been harsh enough. I mean, he's my age, so he's had..." she paused, "well, this Third Child obviously started after Berlin-2, so he's had maybe eight years training. Now, that's still less than me, but... it's _inexcusable_ to be this bad!"

"Asuka..." the man began, trying to prevent the rant.

She ignored him. "I-I-I'm _glad_ I'm here on the Front," she continued. "I never want to pilot with someone that useless. Look at him! An utter lack of control! I bet he's still utterly reliant on the control yokes for memophysical association! What a crude, bumbling _idiot_." She was almost spluttering. "I'm actually offended that someone like that is allowed in a masterpiece like an Evangelion, even one as crude as the Test Model!"

Internally, Kaji sighed. He actually couldn't tell her the truth. The identity of the Third Child was still classified; all Asuka was allowed to know was his age, and sex. And... actually, the GIA agent didn't understand why the age wasn't classified for the other Children, too. Probably some mistake when sealing his file, was his opinion. The whole misunderstanding over how long the Third Child had been training was something he was going to raise with the Evangelion people. _It wasn't healthy to promote misunderstandings_, the spy thought with deliberate irony.

"He does have a very good Synch Ratio," he pointed out.

"And I'm sure that if Evangelion piloting was all about that one number, he'd be the biggest, bestest pilot ever," the girl snapped. "Oh, wait, no. Mine is still better. So, just to clarify, I'm the best pilot in a technical, synchronisational, tactical, and strategic sense, and am also in the best Evangelion." She snorted. "Well, at least they have their priorities right there. It'd be worse if that idiot was in _my_ Unit 02."

Kaji frowned. She did seem to be actively offended by this stuff about the Third Child and Unit 01; probably the idea of a competitor at all, he thought.

Out loud, he said, "Well... um, Asuka, I've just has a call. I'm needed in the office, some new data's come in over the Migou response to what you did today, and I need to check it out. Will you be okay?"

"If I don't die of laughter first," she said, rolling her eyes. "No, I'll be fine. But be back soon, and maybe we can watch the rest of this together."

"Maybe," the man replied, his face deliberately blank.

The schadenfreude-rich laughter resumed as he left.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Her uniform was already hanging up neatly. The smart fabric didn't crease, after all, but it was still a good idea to leave it like that. The dark-green shorts and black top, the entopic image of a white hand flowing and shifting over the surface of the material, were, by contrast, worn-in and comfortable, soft fabric not designed for any kind of formality.

In Colonel Oxanna Kristos' opinion, her current position here at Facility 2501, assigned by Anton as the Army supervisor of this sub-facet of the Evangelion Group, as they couldn't trust the officers seconded to the Foundation fully, was a rather nice one. It was, in fact, almost a bit of a break, compared to the last time she had been dragged off to handle an operation. What had happened in Balleydehob had been... messy.

By contrast here, the most she had to deal with was deployment issues, logistics, and the work from Slavik which she could do remotely. The Evangelion team ran most of the day-to-day affairs, and so she was very much looking in, rather than involved in the day to day affairs.

Perhaps that was why she had started to interact with Test Pilot Soryu more. It really shocked Oxanna how little attention some of the Evangelion team paid to her. Personally, she had put it down to the length of time they had known her; they still looked at her as a little girl. Despite the fact that this "little girl" was, apart from having far more potential in her little finger than some of the engineering staff had in their entire bodies, also walking around at the age of sixteen with a degree in the Natural Sciences. In fact, the only reason she had not moved onto the Arcane Sciences was the fact that it was not permitted, at her age, to do so, which was a _controversial_ decision with her, to say the least. And the fact that she had that known association with the head of the Achtzig Group... well, Oxanna had spent time around the man, and it showed. Oh God, it showed. So, yes, she had effectively begun to mentor the girl, who had instinctively responded, opening like a flower (albeit one with lots of thorns) in response.

Of course, such an association came with fringe benefits...

That was when the house LAI informed her of a visitor.

Checking that her pistol was still in place, she went to the door. _Really, though_, she thought, _the pistol won't do much. If something that's trying to kill me can get past the blood checks, the CATSEYE scans, the wards, the neural scans, they're probably prepared enough that a 10mm won't do much. _

Something ran the bell. Checking the camera and the CATSEYE, she nodded to herself, and stepped up to the door.

No one.

She looked to her left, and then right, up and down the corridor.

Still no one.

"Who are you looking for?" a confused-sounding man asked. A certain blue-shirted unshaven individual was leaning against the wall, to her left.

"Goddamnit, Ryoji," she swore, flinching. "Don't do that."

"You always look left first," he explained. "So I just stepped around you. It's not hard. Especially if you're very fast."

"It's not hard? You're very fast?" She left a deliberate pause. "Then why are you here?"

The man winced, "I walked into that one," before shrugging. "Well, anyway, I bought you some flour," he said, holding a white bag. "Well, I couldn't find any flowers, and I thought that, given it's _pronounced_ the same..." He put it down on the table, smirking at her.

"You're late," she said, trying to both raise an eyebrow and not laugh, while at the same time taking off her top. It was surprisingly hard to multitask like that, especially when he got up close and did _that_ to her ear.

There wasn't much talking after that.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**26th September, 2091**

She stood on a tarmac road. She could feel the material, heated in the height of summer, suck slightly at her shoes, whenever she stopped, and so kept on moving. She had to keep on moving.

It was hot. Sweltering. She couldn't understand why anyone would _want_ to be outside here.

And yet she was surrounded by dark-robed figures, veiled and masked, a legion trudging on foot as one vast, collective organism. They were giants as to her, figures that towered above her. One was holding her hand, clutching it tight, and, she realised, half-leading, half-pulling her along with the crowd.

"_Was passieren?_" she asked, confused. She didn't know, and it was confusing her. No. That wasn't quite true. She knew, but she'd forgotten. She couldn't remember. She couldn't even remember remembering. But she could remember remembering that she remembered, and that was enough to tell her that something terrible was happening.

The looming figure above her stopped, and glanced down, a hint of green light visible under the hood, casting the dark material in a viridian light, before it looked away, and continued pulling her away.

There was a grittiness in the air. She could feel it, horribly dry, horribly itchy, sucking at her skin like some swarm of infernal insects. Moving her fingers of her free hand as she was pulled along, her palm felt like sandpaper.

There were guardians by the side of the road; tall, taller even than the giants in the crowd, and far more bulky, bearing their weapons in grey hands. She began to count the glimpse of their helmets she could see over the top of the masked and robed throng, _eins, zwei, drei..._ If any of the crowd tried to leave the road, they would push them back onto the path. If any stumbled and tripped in the march along this baking road, pairs of the guardians would step onto the road _... vier, fünf..._ and take the fallen. She didn't know where they were taking them, and any questions she asked of the robed figure with her at most gained her a stare, and the same hint of green light from under the deep hood, before the march continued.

_... sechs, sieben, acht, neun..._

She couldn't stop the march. It was going to happen, one way or another. All she could do was try to stay upright, and stay with the giant who clutched her hand.

Another fall. _... zehn, elf..._ Another one taken.

In the distance, far behind her, something began to scream, ancient, horrid, and yet horrifically young; a mechanical rise and fall which rose until her teeth vibrated, the sensation dropping just as the sound did until she could feel it in her gut. She wanted to turn to see what it was, but she now knew that she had been told not to look back. She couldn't look back. She would be in a Lot of trouble if she did, she thought with a sudden giggle.

The crowd, the pilgrimage, only picked up its pace.

_...zwölf, dreizehn, vierzehn, fünfzehn..._

And that was when it happened. The first sign was the sudden white light which lit the giants from behind, and cast deep, dark, hungry shadows on the road in front of them. There was a sudden wash of heat, extreme even in the already baking temperatures of the height of summer, and she screamed in terror and pain, as did the robed and masked giants that surrounded her. And then came the noise, a terrible booming thunder to go with the flash of sun-lightning.

She looked back.

The pillars of light erupted from the great city, devouring its pyramids and consuming those pilgrims which had not gotten far enough away. The wrath of the heavens came for all alike.

Screaming in pain, clutching the rods of agony into her skull which she had once called eyes, she fell to the ground.

And strong hands closed around her feet and her arms, and carried her off.

_...sechzehn, siebzehn..._

Asuka Langley Soryu awoke, streaming with sweat. The acrid scent of terror filled the room, the hint of red light from the nightlight plugged in at the end of the room enough to cast the place in striations of crimson and black, but not enough to banish the shadows which lurked at the edge of vision, even to her eyes.

Arching her back, sticking her chest into the air (and suddenly feeling a hint of welcome cool, for the covers had evidently slid off in the night), she took a deep, shuddering breath, and let it out slowly. The gauze bandages, sealed over the sympathetic burns from the missile, were a patch of warmth, tight against her inflamed skin. Slowly, slowly, her spine lowered itself back into the hollow in the mattress, and she scrambled for the light at her bedside table.

In the soft glow, Asuka stared up at the ceiling. Then, with an effort, she swung her legs out of bed, to sit upright. No longer lit in red, it had the identical feel of so many military-type accommodations. Identical feel, and identical structure; this was a standard room design. In a sense, although she had only been here for a week, for the training at 2501 which had turned into... into what had happened today. No, what had happened yesterday, now, she realised, glancing over at the clock. She shook her head, an exhausted gesture of annoyance at how distracted she was feeling. Yes, despite the fact that she had only been here for a week, the ceiling was so utterly familiar that even the smallest quirks of design were known.

Clumsily, with stiff-feeling fingers, the girl peeled off her soaked top, the slight chill of the night air against her wet flesh a reassuring feel. Taking the drier front, Asuka dried herself off against it, further. She might as well feel more comfortable, as the top was already ruined for sleeping in, at least this night. Scrunching the sodden garment into a ball, she hurled it into the laundry basket, bouncing it in off the wall.

If one were to look at the contents of the plastic basket, one might see identical garments forming geographic strata of disturbed nights.

Asuka shivered slightly, and crossed her arms in front of her, before uncrossing them again. Why did she care about that? Either Kaji was home, and he might get a look at her wonderful body, or he wasn't, and she didn't need to care. Either way, there was nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, yes, after all, Nazzadi culture, insofar as one could refer to one culture, rather than a vast and complex noosphere of experimental memeplexes, didn't have a nudity taboo, and if he did get a look at her, she could just say that she was emulating the cultural practices of _Homo sapiens nazzadi_.

It would probably be more convincing if she didn't smell of hot and dampness and fear. And, always, underneath everything, the scent of LCL. It never came out, not really. Not when it was being swallowed and taken in through the lung walls and through the tear ducts and through anything exposed. There was a reason the plug suits were sealed at the neck, after all. It just diffused into the body, and stayed there. The injections and the scrubbers and the medichines and the UV-washes and the denaturing agents and the... and the _everything_ did their best.

Their best wasn't good enough. She could always, always smell it in her sweat. Just a hint, normally, but in these terror-filled nighttimes, it was notable to people who didn't spend time around it, a recognisable tang of metal and blood and _something_ to the air. Bed coverings didn't last long with her.

She licked her forearm.

God, she could even taste it.

Sagging forwards onto her lap, Asuka stared down at the green carpet. She just wanted to _sleep_. It was true that she only _needed_ about five or so hours, and could cope on less; a gift of what her grandmother had had done to her mother. It still wore her down, to live like this. Physiologically, she would be able to operate fine. Psychologically, the reddish-blond girl always wanted more sleep. That had to wait, though, as she'd feel even worse in the morning if she didn't shower before putting on a fresh top.

But before that, there was the necessity to write down what she could remember of the dream. Her psychologist insisted on it; a problem made worse by the fact that all the dream suppressants they had tested on her interfered with the synchronisation process. Or, in one case, caused a violent allergic reaction, which had almost put her in a coma.

Which made them _not_ an option.

Clumsily, she reached for the PCPU on her bedside table, without looking, gaze still locked on her pale feet and the green carpet which they rested on. By touch, she turned it on, and only then did she drop it between her feet, as she composed her thoughts, trying to ensure that she could record everything.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Ryoji?"

Two naked bodies, entwined together.

"Hmm?"

"You're _good_ at this."

"Hmm." His tone was rather self-satisfied.

"Just one thing."

"Hrhmm?"

"Shave, man!" Oxanna propped herself up on her elbows, mussed blond hair hanging loose around her face. "For... mmmrph... for fuck's sake, shave! Stubble is _not good_."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

In the cold, harsh white light of the bathroom, Asuka stared at her reflection. Few would have recognised the Second Child, the confident, assertive, almost-arrogant prodigy, with her face grey with fatigue, hair soaked in sweat.

The faint scent of LCL was making her slightly hungry.

There was a hiss of water, as she turned on the tap, grabbing a pink mug from beside the basin. She filled the cup, and took a gulp, before spewing it all out, and unleashing a blister of profanity. The water went into the sink, and the tap was switched to "Cold", before the process was repeated.

"Who the hell leaves the tap on 'Hot', anyway?" Asuka angrily muttered to herself. It was a brief outburst which would have been far more recognisable as the face she wore to the outside world to an outside observer, before the cold brightness of the light and the dull grey of her exhaustion snuffed it out.

The gush of water was a momentary distraction. The splash of the cold, as the jet hit the plane surface against her skin was a sudden chill quite unlike that of sweat, and Asuka flinched away, hairs already standing on end. She didn't really have to clean herself down now, did she? She could just sleep like that, just sleep, and do it in the morning. There wouldn't be anything wrong with that, would there?

Yes. There would be. She forced her cupped palms into the water, and splashed it over her face, massaging the water in. And then, because it really was _cold_, she turned around and grabbed the nice dark red dressing gown, a birthday present from Uncle Cal a few years ago, and wrapped herself in the fluffy warmth. It was only as she turned back to the mirror that she sighed. This was going to have to go in the wash, for sure. She _liked_ this dressing gown, and didn't want to see it ruined. And a replacement just wouldn't be the same, for all that it would have the same structure.

Automatically, unthinkingly, she cleaned her hands, carefully scrubbing at them with soap and the nail brush. Then, with slow deliberateness, she looked down at her hands. Fine, delicate fingers, the nails cut short and, on the left hand, a little bit bitten. Asuka reminded herself that she'd have to go get some new ones, soon. Long nails were completely impractical for a plug suit, and tended just to get broken (sometimes messily) if they got too long, but it was nice sometimes, just for an afternoon, before her next synch test, to get to show them off. Before she had to trim them down, the synthetic keratin discarded, to be recycled. Just like everything else in her life.

With equal slowness, she raised her right index finger, and jabbed herself in the eyeball. She did not even blink.

The smooth, inorganic hardness of an Eye met her questing finger. As always. Just as every time she did it.

_Good._

They might be able to make them look real, but they weren't real to the touch. The surface was hard, solid, quite unlike the squishiness of the jelly-filled eyeball she had been born with. The retina was engineered for efficiency and effectiveness, quite unlike the haphazard ministrations of Darwin. They gave above and beyond peak-human clarity of vision, quite apart from the other tweaks incorporated from nature, from Nazzadi, avian and mantis-shrimp alike.

She had had them for so long, since just before her ninth birthday, periodic upgrades necessary to adjust for her growth. And that made them her eyes. Not the ones she had been born with. Her Eyes. Not anyone else's.

She ran her finger under the eyelid, around the point where the Eye fused with her rebuilt skull. The eye socket was a weakness, an entry point, and, in more technical matters, they needed somewhere to anchor the heavily rebuilt, only partially organic sensory organ. Asuka could _feel_ the difference between pseudo-flesh and flesh, feel the transition from conventional bone to the vat-grown variant that edged the Eye. Removing her finger, she cleaned it off, under the running water.

_Yes. A shower. Good. No, Kaji might be asleep. I don't want to wake him. If he's here._

_I could always go check..._

Slowly, carefully, she placed one naked foot after another, making her way without sight (not that the low light levels were a problem for her) through the familiar corridors of the standardised housing. The carpeting under her feet was warm, even if it was a little hard, and perhaps wearing thin in places from the roughness. She placed one hand on his door, to push it open.

Asuka then paused, and tweaked her dressing gown, such that an _almost_ indecent amount of cleavage was showing.

Through the open door, she could see that the bed was untouched, the neat sheets obviously unslept in. Again.

If she cried as she showered, alone in this empty house, then it was lost in the torrent of warm water.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

As it turned out, Lance Corpral Xuan Do was actually going to be getting a medal. In fact, she was going to be getting more than one. There would be the standard White Laurel of Bravery, because she had managed to acquire a broken ankle in the fight, as well as the fact that her neck was in a cast. But she was also going to be getting the Kanala Seal, for "Valorous Deeds While Unequipped For Combat."

The morning light, streaming in through the east-facing windows of the surface hospital, was warm; they'd moved her far enough back that there wouldn't be any of the emfog clouds, legacies of previous battles, to cast the world into silver-lit greyness. The sight from the window was less pleasing. The Blank, the Infiltrator that she'd killed, had not been working alone. And they had succeeded in their missions, at least partially. They'd managed a lot more than putting her in here, and killing all those people in the anteroom. The wreckage of Hangars 013 and 014 were visible, the fires extinguished, but the wreckage clear to see. The bugs had managed to compromise a repair technician, she'd heard, and the damage that had caused was evident. Only one wall of Hangar 013 was still standing; the rest was just rubble, while Hangar 014 was riddled with worm-like holes around which the building had run like wax. The recovery vehicles, hauling away damaged mecha and tanks, were still trying to extract as many assets as they could, in case the Migou attacked again.

Still, it could have been worse for the NEG. If they'd managed to get access to large amounts of explosives...

Cutlery clinked, as Xuan hungrily devoured the nutrient broth that was her breakfast. Her left hand was lay beside her, bandaged and in a cast; she had managed to fracture two fingers, as well as break her ankle, and it was numb through the targeted painkillers. At least she hadn't broken anything in her right hand, as well. She'd have been useless if both hands were incapacitated like this.

Finishing up her bowl, she stared up at the ceiling, and told the LAI monitoring her that she'd finished. It took only a short while for a nurse to show up, to collect the waste.

He was kind of cute, too. Nicely built, square-jawed, very green eyes...

"How are you feelingly, Lance Corporal?" he asked her, as he picked up the tray, and added the pile on his trolley. He glanced sideways at the machine. "You seem to be doing well."

Xuan shrugged. "I've had worse." A smile crept onto her lips. "I've had worse in training, actually."

The young man winced. "Really?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yep. Fell off a wall, managed to break my leg." The woman paused. "You can check my record. I always throw everything I can into doing things. It's something you should always do, live for the moment. Don't you agree?"

Inwardly, Xuan groaned. That had been a really, really bad pseudo-pass at him. God, the painkillers must be affecting her more than she thought they were. With luck, he wouldn't have...

The man raised one eyebrow at the remark. "I'm sorry, Lance Corporal, I do have a boyfriend."

_Damn. He noticed. And is in a relationship. And prefers men. Why me?_ She managed to stifle the outwards manifestation of her annoyance, though, and smiled weakly. "I had to try."

The man shrugged. "Well, I think I'll interpret it as a compliment. But... hang on a moment," he said, raising one finger to an ear, his left Eye lighting up to show that it was actively intercepting his vision. "Yes?" He paused. "Yes, sir. I'm actually there at the moment... yes." Another pause, longer. "Really? Understood, I'll inform her."

Xuan made a curious noise.

"Um... well, I don't know exactly how to put this, Corporal Do, but..." the man paused. "Wait a moment, that's a lie. I do know how to put this. You'll be getting a visit from Marshal Hassan in a few minutes."

Xuan turned chalk white. "R-r-really? M-m-marshal Hassan, while I'm still in hosp..." She paused, and shook her head. "I didn't expect that," she said, forcing a smile onto her face.

The nurse smiled. "Well, he's visiting the victims of last night's attack on the base, and, well," the corners of his eyes crinkled up, "well, you did manage to kill the one Blank which made a break into the base, rather than military assets. I heard they think may have been part of an assassination thing... you know, going for commanders, before it got caught in the lockdown. Of course he was going to want to meet with you," the man said with increasing enthusiasm. "You're a hero."

"Oh... yes. That makes sense," Xuan said, slowly. "Just bad luck me and all those people happened to be in the same section as it."

The green-eyed man nodded, more seriously, the smile gone. "Yes. Indigo Blanks are very hard to detect, and... well, you did what you had to do," he said, seriously.

Xuan nodded. "What I had to," she said slowly. "I just wish I could have got it before it killed all those people."

A stomp of heavy boots, and the slow, crushing steps of Centurion powered armours in the high and wide corridor spoke of the arrival of the senior officer. Taking up position by the door and by the window, the grey-armoured figures were alert, scanning the exits and windows. Compared to all this elaborate security, the Marshal himself was just another man; shaven-headed, with aristocratic, even pharaonic features and high cheekbones. His dark eyes matched his neat uniform.

"Room is secure, sir," reported a mechanical voice through the speakers of the armour. "We've got all exits covered, and windows were already set to opaque."

"Thank you, Sergeant," said Marshal Hassan, with a nod of his head. He took several steps into the room, coming to a stop at the end of Xuan's bed. "Lance Corporal," he said, his accent, from his childhood in the slums of old Cairo before the First Arcanotech War, still prominent, "congratulations."

"Th-thank you, sir," Xuan said, stuttering.

The shaven-headed man looked down at the injured woman. A small, slightly superior smile crept onto his lips. "Really, Corporal Do, you can relax a little. I don't expect you to stand at attention. That would be a little hard in your current condition, for one."

Xuan's laughter was nervous, and overloud. She winced. "Sorry, sir," she said, her face pale. "It's just... well, I didn't expect to get a chance to meet someone like you... um... to have you visiting my hospital bed... um, okay, now I'm babbling."

The smile was somewhat paternalistic. "Actually, Corporal, I've had a look at your file." He pulled up a chair, and sat down, by the side of her bed, on her left. "Well... what to say? You managed to survive the loss of the rest of your squad, held out against both Migou and Loyalist forces while keeping hidden enough that they didn't find you, and managed to provide vital observational data. That alone would be impressive. Then, before you'd even cleared checks, you managed to take down, while unarmoured, a Heavy Combat Infantrywoman who'd been Blanked, by... well, by beating her to death with a rifle butt."

Xuan blushed. Put like that, it did sound rather ridiculous, almost contrived. A look of embarrassment on her face, she massaged her right Eye with her palm. "I was just doing my job, sir," she said. Then, with one precise, quick motion, she punched Marshal Hassan in the unarmoured thigh.

The man barely had time to look shocked, before the nerve agent in his bloodstream hit his brain. It was quick. The tiny carbon-fibre syringes, which had been hidden in her standard-issue light underskin bioweave, couldn't carry much, nor could much be hidden without the NEG finding it, but the rigid hair-like fibres now sticking out of her knuckles still had enough to kill one man in less than ten seconds.

"Just doing my job," Xuan Do said.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

_"Movement!" The tone was alert, concerned. "Camera 12, north. Looks like... yes, it's a Dragonfly."_

_There was a slight shudder among the troops. The Dragonfly classes may have different from example to example, but they were always shockingly fast fliers, with superlative stealth systems. The ideal scouts, in fact._

_"Do!" the leader of Charlie Fireteam, the other half of her squad, ordered over the radio, "get those AA-Hornets set up!"_

_"Alpha-one's operational," she replied, checking the status on her casecreen, "and alpha-two is being loaded right now." She paused. "We've got four Spada up, too."_

_"Good. Make sure you tag'em into the Foxtrot-Oscar network when you're done. Over and out."_

_That was when the booming announcement resounded, the echoes shaking dust from the walls_

_"Surrender," it said, calm and impassive, eminently reasonable. "We offer you a chance to surrender. Just surrender, and accept our entirely reasonable demands. There are much worse things out there than us, and we shall protect you from them. That is what we have done for billions of your years, and that is what we shall continue to do. Be not afraid."_

_"_Sanginoji _progogandi," muttered Rereny, next to her, in her irritation applying the grammatical rules of Nazzadi to an English word._

_Xuan paused. Yes, that was it. She had her provisional instructions._

Eliminate all witnesses if possible, then prepare for additional instructions.

_"Baguna, Nahuel, you're on overwatch. Maintain radio silence until you have positive contact," she ordered. "Rereny, you're with me. Cover me while I check the feed." The rest of her squad moved to obey._

_Pulling out her casescreen, already connected up to her AICS, she opened up the control window, with codes that she shouldn't have known, and turned back on the full-integration networking. Which absolutely, completely, utterly should not have been active when facing the Migou, and their __superlative grasp of technology._

_A coordinate was quickly put into an insecure datafeed, and then, before the artillery strike had even hit Charlie Fireteam, summoned in precisely on the cache they were preparing, she was up._

_"Behind you!" she gasped at Rereny, her own rifle already raising, and as the woman turned, she shot her in the back of the head, a cluster of three bullets at point blank range. Settling back down, rifle aimed at the door, she took a deep breath, and controlled her voice._

_"Baguna, Nahuel, get here," she ordered, the measured tone of a NCO deliberately underlain with a hint of hysteria. "Rereny is down, needs medical assistance!"_

_The cautious movement through the ruins, to get to her position, was designed to make them harder targets for any snipers. All it did was meant that they were moving slower, and thus they were easier targets. The seeker took Nahuel in the chest, the explosive charge smearing him over the walls. Baguna was knocked out by the blast, bleeding from multiple puncture wounds in his SP-armour. Another cluster of bullets to the head finished him off._

_Yes. Good. It was now clear._

_"Operative in place," she said, rattling off her identification code into the unsecured link. "Security is maintained. Requesting briefing."_

_The voice was sibilant, thin, whispering._

Good _it said. _We now have access to your Armour Internal Command System. Necessary data alteration has been performed. Stand by for instructions.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"How... how, I would like to ask you, did a fucking Blank manage to get past all those scans to be able to get far enough in to be able to take out a fucking Marshal!" Colonel Oxanna swore, pacing up and down in the observation chamber. "I am going to be bringing in so many fucking internal investigators that people won't be able to take a step without getting probed!"

Agent Kaji, in his role as the local representative of the Global Intelligence Agency looked up from his PCPU, face grim. "Because I'm beginning to suspect that she wasn't a Blank. Even before we get back the results from the trawl. Just a common , garden-variety traitor. Mind changed through persuasion... not even trauma, that leaves characteristic mental patterns which a trawl, or if she were ever pulled in for a deep scan, might get." He shook his head. "So much harder to catch, and..."

"... and we have a tendency to neglect that possibility, because of how we know Blanking works," continued a female GIA agent with coffee-coloured skin, somewhat more neatly dressed than her co-worker. "That is to say, how we know that it _works_; Blanks can't be turned or compromised or feel regrets... unless it serves their objectives, of course... unlike someone who just chose to work for the Migou. So we're more scared of it. But these damn Migou operatives, they're trained not to think about what they're doing. Even a surface sweep from a trawl, or a parapsychic mind-reader won't catch them."

"Three-hundred-and-seventeen LITAAI subroutines were dedicated to an analysis of her background, as directed," reported COEUS, its ARvatar suddenly appearing, and making several people in the room jump. "Attempting to correlate relationships, to build up who subject's cell is. The report is now complete."

"Thank you, COEUS," Colonel Oxanna said, her tone clipped. "Forwards the results to the GIA, EuroHighCom, C2, and to Vice Marshal Slavik."

"Understood, Colonel." The virtual 'presence' of the TITAN departed.

"You really think we'll get back anything meaningful?" a man in a white coat asked, one eyebrow raised. "You know how the bugs like their operational security."

Kaji winced. "It could have been worse. Could have been another Anchorage incident."

Most of the room shuddered at that. It had been much, much earlier in the war, and the NEG correspondingly less aware of what the Migou could do. As it turned out, what they could do was conceal a tiny amount of antimatter, approximately two milligrams, in a tiny, sorcerously reinforced arcanomagnetic containment field, planted in an adjunct to a senior member of the North American Command. It would not work now; the magnetic field and the sorcery were blatant if you were aware of what you were looking for. But back then, they had not known. The resultant blast had decapitated the Regional command structure, and in the chaos, a massive Migou attack had hit. And Alaska had fallen.

As a result, the people in this room, in the here and now, were more than a little concerned about what might be coming next.

"Do we have a secure link to Vice Marshal Slavik yet, COEUS?" Colonel Oxanna asked.

"Yes. Quantum link prepared. Please report to Communications Room 03, Colonel."

She glanced around the room, over through the one way glass, to where the traitor was being... well, it had started as a vivisection, but after the tiny charge the bugs had evidently built into the back of her Eyes to detonate at a full level mental trawl had gone off, it had turned into a dissection. It had been just enough to release one of their tailored chemicals which caused rapid neural degradation, making her brain useless for the extraction of data. She shared a glance with Ryoji... no, Agent Kaji, in these circumstances. There was almost certainly a Migou-cult operating here. Except that wasn't quite the right word. They weren't cultists, in the same sense that the Dagonites, or other ENE-worshipping fools were. They were more akin to trained cells, of people who actually _believed_ that submission to the Migou was the best thing that humanity could do to ensure its own survival. They were dangerous, because they were comparatively sane. They didn't sacrifice people to dark entities, or set up child molestation rings, or smuggle captives off to the Dagonite camps. They just stayed in position, the rare few communications following ingenious paths to get to them. Just stayed there, living normal lives, watching, waiting.

Until they did something like this.

As she strode down the corridor, and was subjected to the necessary security checks, Colonel Oxanna Kristos really wished that they didn't do things like this. Adjusting her beret, she entered the communications room. Only one other person was there, his image displayed in her Eyes, with the possible addition of COEUS, a nebulous blue presence, depending on how one classified the TITAN.

"Sir," she said, saluting her direct superior. Although she was only a Colonel, an O-6, and he was a Vice Marshal, an O-9, she was nevertheless his direct subordinate, attached directly to his command. She served as his liaison, and as a field command officer; a specialist in psychological warfare and the strategic use of terror best deployed to where she was needed, rather than holding a permanent command.

More unofficially, she was his left hand, his _sinister_ hand, for experimental projects, black operations, and things that the Army as a whole wanted kept at a step away from High Command. Things like the Army Special Weapons Division and the Evangelion Group, in fact.

Slavik paused, his image clear enough that even the beads of sweat on his forehead were visible. "COEUS," he told the TITAN, "return the optimal strategy, assuming the Migou do attack with a Level 4 attack force."

"Level 4?" Oxanna echoed, the data in her Eyes bringing her up to date.

"Yes." The man's face was grim. "That's assuming they use all the potential assets. They've been planning this, Colonel. The TITANs have noted a slight shift in troop rotations over the last two months; just slightly more coming in than being cycled out, but no increase in frontline troops. And, of course, the establishment of one of their forwards repair bases for capital ships."

The blond shook her head. That was not good.

"Computation complete," COEUS reported. "Assuming a typical Level 4 force, there is an approximately 70% chance that they will break through at Nova Kakhovka. Forces stationed there are insufficient. If all available military forces are scrambled, the probability is reduced to approximately 55%. Casualties will be severe even in the case of success."

Colonel Kristos leaned forwards. "And if field-capable prototypes are deployed as well?" she asked, supported by her superior's nod.

"Unknown. There is a lack of data."

"Extrapolate from file EVA_02_25092091, then!"

A pause. "Breakthrough probability is reduced to approximately 45%. Error bars are plus or minus 10%."

The two humans shared a glance over the link. "Not good enough," Slavik said.

"By pulling the majority of the forces at Nova Kakhovka back to Position Alpha-Indigo-Xray-Xray One-Zero-Zero-Six, the line can be restablished," COEUS added. "Moreover, Nova Kakhovka will be an inviting location for their own fortifications. By pre-emptively use of strategic-yield weaponry while they set up, a favourable outcome, within the limits of this scenario, can be achieved."

Slavik paused, leaning his head on one hand. "Define 'favourable outcome', COEUS," he ordered.

"They all die," stated the TITAN, impassively.

"That'll do," said the Vice Marshal. "Colonel, obtain the data from COEUS. Tell Brigadier Anama to base his plans on its scenarios." He paused. "And there's one more thing. About Evangelion Unit 02..."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

To a human, it would have been night-dark inside the hold. To a baseline-Nazzadi, it would have been dimly lit.

But to the Loyalists, both conventional and Elite, it might as well have been midday, for all the difference it made to their implants.

Rack upon rack upon rack of main battle mecha were stacked there, ready in position for a combat drop from the inside of the Drone Ship. The faint blue lights marking the path up to their cockpits were, in fact, the main source of illumination in this cavernous space. Back in the First War, they would have been all colours; relying on a lack of cohesiveness and distinction to force the foe into suboptimal firing choice. And, more subtly, the Migou had not wished for the Nazzadi to win to easily. It had been part of their plan for both sides to be heavily mauled, such that the Nazzadi would not think of expansion into the outer system. That had been stripped from them by the grim necessities of the Second Arcanotech War, though; the same greys and greens and blues that the New Earth Government used were now also present on the Nazzadi mecha.

And then there were the mecha of the Elite. The lesser Nazzadi used units which were still built with human-level technology. They were cheap, expendable, and could be repaired by the Loyalists. The Elite did not; their machines were sleek, almost techno-organic, but approaching the line from the other side. They were not flesh merged with machine; they were machine so advanced that it had almost become flesh. In some of the more specialised ones, the pilots were fused with the machine, little more than another processing centre for the Migou-designed machinery. For the others, the cockpit was more akin to an iron maiden, an-inwards facing coffin of fine nails designed to make the flesh and the machine twinned in unity.

Red eyes. Glinting red eyes, everywhere, reflecting the hints of light like a cat's eye.

A signal was sent around, instructions to the computational equipment in the cerebrums of every member of _Homo sapiens nazzadi_ present, alerting them that it was time. In neat, organised ranks, they filed, climbing the ladders to their assigned craft. Slowly, the light levels in the craft increased, bringing it up to the daylight outside, to give them a chance to adjust. There was camaraderie, and bickering going on from the more normal Nazzadi, dialogue and attitudes that would have been scarily familiar to anyone from the New Earth Government.

There was none from the Elite. They knew what they had been instructed to do, and they were ready. There was nothing else that needed to be said. They would survive, or they would not; either way, they would complete their missions.

And if they did not survive, well, their knowledge would live on, ready to go into the melange which new Nazzadi, grown in the facilities in the Asteroid Belt, would be decanted with. It was immortality, of a sort; all that was worthy, useful of you would live on in others.

The hatches were sealed. The motion felt, as the Drone ship folded back up, the armoured landing area folding back as a ribcage would into its hull.

A faint buzzing. A thin whisper. The noises of one of their masters, emulating human speech through the motions of their wings.

_the sensory data is such that it has been determined that the forces of the New Earth Government are retreating_ it whispered, in the Nazzadi language. _this was expected and desired; there will be no changes to the plan._ The buzzing shifted, the tone sounding almost satisfied. _your duty is to strike and harass their fleeing forces, while your kin hold the new conquests until the capital defences are set up; that is all that matters_.

A cheer rose through the hollow space; a jeer of victory foretold.

There was a second message for the Elite, uploaded straight to their cerebral cortices. They did not hear it; they merely _remembered_ hearing it.

_they will be targeted_, it told them. _they are a diversion. The facility identified as _'Testing Facility 2501' _must be destroyed, for it cannot be captured, and cannot be permitted to exist in hostile hands. Let nothing escape._

There was no cheer from them. Only silent acknowledgement.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Asuka Langley Soryu donned her plug suit with all the solemnity of a medieval knight preparing for battle. And for much of the same reasons. The black undersuit; soft and padded, came first, covered in interface ports and conduction mechanisms. A press of the button at the neck, and the suit suddenly contracted, the memomaterials hugging up to her like a second skin. Next came the outer layer, the crimson carapace obvious to the rest of the world. "02" was emblazoned just above her breastbone; she had got permission to put the white hand and triangle of the _Soli Vodi Dexti_ on her right shoulder. Thicker, clumsier, it was nevertheless there for a very good reason, as an impact and acceleration suit, as well as functioning as full ANaMiNBC protection should she find herself out of her Evangelion. That was vital. Berlin-2 wouldn't be permitted to happen again. Last came the cowl, the plated material folding out from a collar on the outer skin, to cover the A10 superconducting QUI Devices. A hiss, and it sealed itself. Her face was a thin mask of pale flesh, a heart-shape rimmed by her brow line and her jaw.

All she had to do input a few commands, and the plug suit attached itself to the A10s, and to the ports for her Eyes, just under both earlobes, and she was ready. Eyes reflexively flicking back and forwards, she read the feed from the local fork of Gehirn, Unit 02's Ouranos LITAN, and nodded once, in satisfaction. Another perfect plug-suit set up. Naturally.

"COEUS, I am ready," she informed the TITAN, as she stretched, the bulk weighing her down. It seemed sometimes like the plug suit was accumulating mass as she got older; years ago, it has just been the undersuit, but they kept on refining the technology.

"Good," was the LAI network's response. It paused. "Colonel Kristos is coming to see you for a tactical briefing," it added.

The girl tilted her head slightly. "Hmm. We will be retreating," she said, with narrowed eyes. "I don't like it, but it's the only sensible thing."

The bluish-light of the ARvatar of the TITAN pulsed in her Eyes. "Why do you believe that?" it said, in the same neutral tone.

"Two reasons, COEUS," she said, the smirk not quite overcoming the frown of annoyance. "Firstly, after the loss of one capital grade defence, Nova Kharakhov will be very hard to hold. You'll have been unable to properly decide what I could do in the defence due to lack of data, and the fact that my AT-Field ruins your statistical databases. And the stupidity of the Army means that they won't be willing to risk it, even though I know that I can pull it off."

The TITAN was silent.

"You will've come to that line of logic," Asuka said, leaning forwards, blue Eyes shining. "You're conservative, COEUS. Just something to do with how your LAI programmes interact... your personality, if I were to anthromorphise you. Like RHEA, and not like CRIUS. Uncle Cal always says that it's funny how your emergent 'personalities' are different."

"What is the second reason?" it asked, its voice even a hint more mechanical than usual.

Asuka shrugged. "'Cause if we were going into action now, she'd have been briefing me in the entry plug, not externally," she said with a smirk.

"Then why would I insist that you wear your plug suit?" came a voice from behind her.

"Because you're afraid that the Migou will be targeting Facility 2501 and want to have me ready to pilot in case they break through before they can get 02 into the transports." Asuka rolled her eyes as she turned. "It's not exactly _hard_ to work out. The entire fact that they're hitting Nova Kharakhov, rather than Gladiator or Sentinel," two of the purpose-build military facilities along the line, "suggests that they're after something." The girl frowned. "And the way that they got Marshal Hassan suggests they have enough infiltrators in place to know about it."

"Continue that line of logic, then, Asuka," said Oxanna, tilting her head slightly.

The girl smiled. "Which means that the retreat is just an opportunity for the counterattack," she said, confidently. "You're going to let them have 2501; why does it matter, when you've got rid of everything important from it, especially me and Unit 02. And considering our position... you're going to hit them, because they'll have to overextend to hit 2501. Which means that I'll be spearheading the counterattack, because that's exactly what I've trained to do. A Evangelion doesn't take and hold ground; it smashes weak spots and flanks, eliminating specific targets. It's a lance, perfect for a counterattack backed up by naval support."

"No." The words were flat, measured. "That is incorrect."

"B-b-but," Asuka stammered, "that's the optimal use of an Evangelion, tactically and strategically! It's what I've trained for! I can do it!"

The blond woman stared at the girl, dressed up in the thick, almost slightly insectoid, from the smooth lines and the bumps on the head which marked the place of the A10 clips, without overt emotions. "You are being moved back to Ostberlin-2. You are not a front-line soldier, not yet, and so it is not appropriate to use you in that fashion. You are still a Test Pilot."

"I-I-I..." The girl was almost incoherent, before her shoulders slumped. "I understand," she said, eyes closed and downcast. "Can't I even..."

"No. Unit 02 is being attached to a Phoenix for transport. You will be riding in-plug, back to Ostberlin." Colonel Kristos' face softened. "If what I've heard is true," she said, reaching out to lift Asuka's chin, "it's probably going to be moved over to Chicago-2, for final field tests. You'll be able to..."

One black-gauntleted hand, the thinner material around the hands a different colour, batted the hand away. "Don't patronise me; I said I understand," the girl hissed, turning on her heel, and stalking off. "I'll be getting this... this _toy_ checked over by professionals," she said, jabbing herself in the chest, "since obviously the Second _Child_ can't be trusted that her plug suit is operational on her own."

The blond gritted her teeth, eyes narrowed, but said nothing, and let Asuka go.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Through the line of defence, the oncoming Migou forces swept; like the onrushing tide they washed away the bastions of defence, weakened by the withdrawal. The skies were filled with the booms of their hypersonic craft tearing through the air, as, below the contrails of warped air, the vast, heavy shapes of Migou craft moved their own stationary capital grade defences forwards, deploying the new additions on site. The lines had move forwards, and Containment was proceeding on the third planet in a horribly contaminated system.

This was the Aeon War.

* * *

~'/|\'~


	9. Chapter 8: Rei 01, Something White

**Chapter 8**

**Rei 01, Something White / As if just there, though an immortal, she felt cruel pain.**

**EVANGELION**

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

_Every Angel is terror. And yet,  
ah, knowing you, I invoke you, almost deadly  
birds of the soul. Where are the days of Tobias,  
when one of the most radiant of you stood at the simple threshold,  
disguised somewhat for the journey and already no longer awesome  
(Like a youth, to the youth looking out curiously).  
Let the Archangel now, the dangerous one, from behind the stars,  
take a single step down and toward us: our own heart,  
beating on high would beat us down. What are you?_

The Second Duino Elegy  
Rainer Maria Rilke

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**A Day That Has Past  
A Time Which Is Now**

Representative Gendo Ikari stared at the projected screen. He adjusted his glasses, pushing them back up onto the bridge of his nose.

"Activate."

"_What's the first thing you remember?"_

The buzz of the Technical Centre started up again. Status updates came from all the technicians, staring down at the white-painted behemoth that stood, restrained to the wall, before them.

"Connect internal power supply to all circuits," ordered Dr Akagi. "Initialise connection of exterior power in T-minus twenty seconds."

Feeling rather useless, Major Misato Katsuragi, Director of Operations for Project Evangelion, and the woman who would be responsible for tactical command of this Unit if this test succeeded, did the best thing she could, and crossed her fingers. One hand unconsciously crept to the bulge under her uniform, where her cross-shaped necklace hung .

"_What is the first thing you remember?" _

"Main power system connected," reported Lieutenant Ibuki, heading up the team of nine Operators running in full immersion mode, down in the Magi tanks. "Activation system online. We are ready to begin adjustment of attunement pattern at your signal, doctor."

"_Who are you? _

Dr Ritsuko Akagi looked around the observation chamber. The Representative stood closest to the diamond viewing plates, Deputy Representative Fuyutsuki taking up his customary position just behind the younger man. In a very real sense, despite the fact that she was the Director of Science for Project Evangelion, and the Director of the Evangelion Group (as was customary for the eponymous Project of a Group), the Evangelions were not hers. Both men, the former a prodigy sorcerer who had climbed the ranks of the Foundation with almost indecent speed, the latter a legend in the field of arcanobiology, as the man who had done the first systematic study on the variant hominids known as 'ghouls', were much more tied to it than she was, had been involved in it longer than she had. It was theirs.

The woman ran her tongue over her lips, and swallowed, watching the digits count down in her harcontacts, time-as-volts ticking down until the critical activation voltage was hit.

This Test Pilot Candidate shouldn't fail. Not like almost all the other ones before her.

"_Who are you?_

"It's reached," announced Lieutenant Aoba, the man leaning forwards towards his screen, his long hair tyed back, for once, in a ponytail. "Attunement is in process. Synchronisation is non-zero... 0.04... 0.13... rising."

"We're getting some fluctuations here," Maya's voice, coming in over the speakers in the room, said. "She's... no... we're stabilising. Subject is forming an EFCS Type-1 Attunement. Synchronisation is... clarifying second order harmonics... third order... yes, we have a stable animaneural wavefunction."

"_Who are you?"_

"Start Phase III," ordered Dr Akagi.

"_Who am I?_

"Plug is level 2. Beginning test sequence."

"LITAN feed is clear... reports from in-Unit correlate with external feeds."

"Feeding external power to non-vital systems. Right arm... left arm... all limbs are powered."

"Releasing limited motor controls. D-Brakes are operating at full capacity."

Slowly, ponderously, like the upswing of some vast pendulum, Unit 00 raised its head, to stare directly at the onlookers. It was just an illusion, though; it couldn't actually see them. Not through the reflective surface. Could it?

Was it really just staring at its own reflection?

"Absolute borderline in... 0.5..."

"_Who are you?"_

"... 0.4..."

"_Who are you?"_

"...0.3..."

"_Who are you?"_

"...0.2..."

"_Get away from her!"_

"...0.1..."

"_..."_

"_I know who you are."_

"The pulses are flowing back! Chaotic breakdown in AN-waveform!"

"EFCS-2! Mode has flipped to EFCS-2! No... back to EFCS-1!"

"Synchronisation is constant!"

"What?" Dr Akagi spun, to stare at the unfortunate civilian technician. "That doesn't even make sense! Abort! Break the connection!"

Straining, the white giant fought against its bonds, the dimensional technology that wrapped over its hull trying to keep it in place. It was fighting a losing battle. A deep-bass roar, that shook the gut and the walls alike, emanated from the beast as it fought its bonds. Its one red eye swept from side to side, with jerking, wrenching motions. The deep crackle of breaking ceramics accompanied each jerk of its head.

"D-Brakes are failing! We have an AT-Field! Systematic breakdown of r-state differenatiation!"

"Abort!" barked Dr Akagi. "Operators, break all connections, raise plug to level 0."

A cacophony of screams buzzed through the speakers, made mechanical by the limits of the technology. In Ritsuko's harcontacts, the icons for four of the operators went yellow; two more were a fatal red.

"My...m-my DMIN is stable," blurted out Maya, the pain evident in her voice, "b-b-but the Unit just attacked the retrieval process. My... my... that wasn't the LITAN... only just enough time to cut before it broke thr..."

"Mute the Magi link," ordered Gendo Ikari, coldly, the LAIs complying with his orders and silencing the Operators. "Cut external power, blow the D-Engines."

The shutdown of the external power was immediately effective. Together, the legs and the arms slumped loose, swinging back down to slam into the wall, tearing chunks out of it as they impacted again and again. The head still wrenched, that same bass roar filling the air, but then the charges placed on the D-Engines mounted in the torso blew, shattering the power sources safely. The design for such tests was quite clear; it should always be possible to cut all power. All that the Evangelion, when set up like this, had access to at this moment were the life-support batteries, and they were on a completely different power circuit to the armour systems.

There was a communal sigh of relief from the observation room, now that the Evangelion was now back under control, and a set of blessings for the people who had been careful to ensure that the Unit failed-to-safe.  
_  
An almost animalistic cry of rage and terror and pain, made worse by the fact that the voice that cried out was unmistakably human._

_"No!" A shrieked exclamation._

_White fog; surrounding, enveloping, obfuscating everything._

_"What are you doing with her?"_

"_You will be a god among men." _

Evidently, someone had forgotten to inform Unit 00 of this.

In a single, terrible motion, it tore itself loose of the wall, the barrage of broken connections and constraints impacting like an artillery bombardment against the other side. Fighting the inertia-thieves of the D-Brakes, the vast body slammed itself back into the wall, crushing the sophisticated technology with sheer bulk. The shift in its inertial mass only aided it, as it pushed off from the wall and crushed its front in the same manner.

In terror, the onlookers stared, and the one vast eye of the Unit stared back.

"Initialise TCP-7!" ordered Representative Ikari, the red eye reflected in his own orange glasses.

_Softness, gentleness, calm. All was fogged light, but it did not matter, for two vast hands held her, and rocked her from side to side._

_A children's rhyme, fumbled by someone who only half-remembers the words._

"_You will show men that they do not need gods." _

_And then she was plunged into warmth and darkness._

Roaring, screaming, Unit 00 began to scrabble at its own back with fingers locked into claws. With another impact which shook the room, it pushed backwards into the other wall, and that was enough, for the superstructure snapped of this armoured shell, designed to take a point-blank nuclear blast. It had been ravaged impossibly by the impact with a cleanness which brute force should not have achieved. The containment protocols that Gendo Ikari had ordered were already kicking in, as jets of hard-setting plastic began to coat the white a dull brown, but it seemed unlikely that they would be enough.

**[WARNING! AT-FIELD DETECTED!]** reported a dumb LAI, audible even over the tumultuous chaos of the titan's violence.

Yet it seemed that escape was not the beast's goal, even as the bass took on a strange, shrill whistling.

_Black and white blur to make grey, a finger retracts. _

The damage done to its own back was enough to get a finger under the armour plating that protected the plug.

The look of horror on the bearded man was indescribable. "Rei! No!" he yelled, face as pale as death.

"_I see you."_

With both hands, the titan tore at its own back, reaching up and around with inhuman flexibility. With both hands, it flensed the white plating, and tore at its own implants. With both hands, the flagellant sought its own plug. Gory ichor, dark and septic, ran down, to swirl and mix with the constraining fluid, but the beast did not care, and indeed the shrill noise began to ululate, in a cacophony that sounded all too much like celebration.

"_My baby..." _

One vast finger crushed the exposed end of the entry plug.

And the beast went limp. Legs now sealed in hard-setting plastic (though the onlookers now doubted how effective it would really be), it fell backwards, pivoting at the knees, to slam into the floor with one last terminal impact. Wounded, self-maimed, the fallen titan lay upon its back, dark seas of ichor and tainted plastics pooling around it like some perverse cloak around its white hide.

"Rei!" roared Gendo, in a cry of horror, as he sprinted out of the control room, his glasses falling from his face to land with a snap on the ground. Ritsuko watched him go, and glanced down at the fallen Evangelion, before screwing her eyes shut. She did not see, minutes later, Gendo rush across the floor of the test chamber, only wearing a protective suit because the medical team behind him had forced him to put one on as they waited for the airlock to cycle.

No, she knew how badly she had failed.

Standing behind the behemoth, the man could see the damage in a much more personal way. He was already knee deep in the dark blood of the Evangelion, and was having to wade against the slowly decreasing flow. The transparent faceplate of the suit was blacked out in wide areas, the autocensors doing their best. With a few words, he overrode them, to turn down the filter level. The LAI's protests were ignored; he needed to see what he was doing. Hooking his fingers into the fibrous musculature and broken armour of the Evangelion, he began to climb, up to the partially protruding plug.

The end of the metallic cylinder was a mess, crumpled and crushed by the two impacts. By his estimation, a third one would have wrecked it completely. The second might have been enough, he thought, with a sinking heart, but those thoughts were discarded as he clambered along the plug, a crumpled metal ladder barely enough of a foothold for feet slick with ichor. The damage made it easier to balance on top of the cylinder, but he was still perilously close to slipping as he made his way down it.

With his suited hands, Gendo grabbed the twisted metal around the largest tear in the outer shell of the tube, and pulled. The metal was sharp, and the gloves of the containment suit, although insulated, were not enough. Screaming into the helmet as blood seeped from his palms, he levered open the shattered plug, and clambered inside, screaming again as the edges tore at his back.

The remnants of the LCL that pooled in the nooks and crannies were much redder than normal.

Rei was on her back, still in the pilot's seat, almost inverted from the angle at which the Eva lay. This was not by choice; the control yokes were crushing her midsection, the structure of the plug warped and bent such that they were rammed into her abdomen. It was, in fact, probably the only reason she had not been thrown free by the impact with the ground. Her plug suit, just the undersuit for the test, was lacerated all over; red blood welling up white fabric and white skin. Her breaths were laboured, wet-sounding; she had evidently managed to hack up enough LCL to have marginally functional lungs, but the red drool which stained her lips pink told Gendo just at sight that her lungs had been severely damaged by the effort. It was a marvel that they hadn't collapsed.

And then there was her face. Almost unconsciously, he had been skipping over her face, which lay limp against the headrest. Because one eye, her left one, was a ruined mess, perforated by shrapnel, the ruined eye spilling forth from the socket. The other eye was closed.

Gendo Ikari had seen worse. But he had not seen much worse for someone who survived, and not in a long time.

"Rei," he gasped, through the pain in his hands and his back. "Rei? Are you alive?"

Slowly, wonderfully, the intact eye crept open, a dilated pupil nevertheless focussing on him. She gurgled something through ruined, fluid-filled lungs.

The man smiled, even as the rescue team climbed in behind him, having coated the edges with plastic to make them safer, and widened the hole. "Good," he said, before turning his attention to the others. "Get her to an LCL tank," he ordered. "Keep her alive." And with that said, he collapsed, as the pain overcame him.

The first medical team called for a second one.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**24th September, 2091**

"Well, I'm rather surprised," Ritsuko said, running down the details in the file on the desk in front of her. "I will, of course, defer to your expertise in your field, Dr Tam, but..." she left the statement hanging.

"No, no," the younger man said. "I'm really rather surprised, too. I did not expect this at all. But," he shifted in his seat, in front of Ritsuko's desk, "well, he's mostly _bored_. Well, and a little irritable from the sympathetic burns, but that's natural." He snorted. "Most people tend to be."

"I see," the blond said, running her eyes over the file. "Well, we'd always suspected that the EFCS-1 would provide better anti-AWS shielding than the Type-2," she said, almost to herself, "but this... well, we'd need a bigger sample pool before we could say so."

"I believe the relative lack of trauma... um, especially the psyche-corpus animaneural synthesis issues that arose due to the sudden and traumatic loss of the eye, this time, was also a contributing factor. From conversations with him, he was much better able to come to terms with the fact that he has mild sympathetic burns which match with the injuries, than experiencing the muted pain of the loss of an eye, without actually doing so."

Ritsuko looked up at him, gazing at the younger man with blue-encircled eyes. All of those were reasonable suggestions; the man had been a prodigy of a medical doctor, before transitioning to psychology after a nasty family-related incident, after all. That was why he had been assigned to Project Evangelion. "Maybe," she said out loud. She wasn't willing to commit to anything. "But, you believe that he can be released from observation?"

"Well," the man licked his lips, "erm, it would be more accurate to say that observation can be reduced to the standard day-to-day level..." he glanced at his superior, "oh, you meant that? Then, yes, he can be released from the Observation bay."

"Good." Ritsuko signed the document, and handed it over. "Well, I'm sure Misato will be pleased," she said.

"And you aren't?" The tone was questioning.

Ritsuko rolled her eyes. "Please. This isn't the time for that. But I wouldn't call myself pleased, no. _Satisfied_, yes. It's important to remain detached when considering these things." She held the gaze of the brown-haired man. "We all know the issues with getting too _involved_ in matters which are important, don't we, doctor?"

The man took the signed document, gathering it to him, to hold, almost as a protective barrier. "Yes," he muttered, before blinking. "Thank you, Dr Akagi, for your time," he said, more formally. "I'll be off then."

"Yes," Ritsuko said, her head already lowered to the progress report for Unit 00.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"_Potenejactakrona_ what!" the little black-skinned, red eyed girl screamed at him, remarkably active for someone only just out of intensive care, before continuing to babble at him in an incoherent pidgin of Nazzadi and English. Her friends, clustered around the bed recoiled from the invective. A nurse rushed over at the outburst, obviously worried that she was going into convulsions or that some other medical emergency was occurring. "No, I'm fine," Kany told the orderly, panting, teeth locked together. "But my brother is an idiot!"

The man stared at the boy through narrowed, suspicious eyes. "She's still on the mend," he told him, in a somewhat patronising tone of voice. "Do not agitate her, or I'll have to ask you to leave."

Toja winced. How, exactly, had his sister's friends managed to talk him into coming with them, to explain everything? How was it that he had been persuaded by a bunch of nine-year olds?

"I am fine, by the way," said the dark-haired one, Imi, the girl who had been the reason for him running out.

"And what did you think you were doing, huh?" continued Kany, turning her head to stare at her friend. "Why'd you run out! You know we're not meant to!"

"I did not run out..." The little girl blinked under the glare from the red eyes. "Oh. Because I needed my injectors, and they don't keep spares down in the bunkers, only under the desk. It was necessary." She seemed almost pleading. "You know I need them. Otherwise I get very ill."

The little _nazzady_ relented a little. "Well... maybe. But," she yawned, "but it was silly of both of you. Well, it was silly of you, Imi, and stupid of you, bro."

There was an awkward pause. It wasn't helped in Toja's books by how much Kany managed to sound like their mother had. The voice was younger, higher, but the intonations were near identical.

Toja raised his hand slowly. "Um... can I have back my _manuprokedi_? Since you're out of the tube..."

She shook her head.

"Awwww, come on. Why can't I?"

"Punishment! For making me worry like this when I'm sick and all that."

"I am sorry," he said, the guilt hitting him again, dropping his head.

"You should be!" Kany drew a breath, and seemed to calm down a bit. "Now, come on... not my stupid brother... but what have I missed?"

A boy grinned. "There hasn't been any school at all," he said, "'cause the school building got damaged and stuff... I can see it from the observation place, and there's a big tent thing whole area, and silvery dust everywhere. And really _cooooool_ machines sucking it up. So we get to just do stuff."

Kany pouted. "Bleargh. I'm still in this bed, haven't relearned to walk yet, and I'm not even missing school."

A little girl, her hair platinum blond, poked him in the side, while the conversation continued. "Well, I think it was pretty cool," she whispered to him, gazing up at the tall boy with eyes that he suddenly realised were adoring. "And tonnes of us agree. You're totally like some kind of fairytale prince, coming back with..." she giggled, "Princess Imi and stuff. Of course, Imi isn't a very good princess. She played the witch in the school play," she informed him, with all apparent seriousness.

"Ah," was all that Toja could manage.

"So... you know, if you're looking for a princess..." The ten-year old, her t-shirt covered in childish entopics, smiled shyly at him, then headed over to the rest of the group.

This was... _awkward_. Of all the consequences of leaving the bunker, he had never expected his little sister's friends getting a crush on him to be one of them. A talk with the FSB over the breach of Bunker Security, yes, an immediately scheduled meeting with a counsellor from the Health Service to look for any instability induced by the exposure to the being (fortunately fairly small, and Toja could live with bad dreams), yes, immediate scans, for the second time that day, for any contamination, yes.

At least one nine-or-ten-year old getting a crush on him, no. And there was another thing that he'd have to do, too, because of what had happened on that Wednesday.

He was going to have to handle them both like a man would handle them.

For this problem, Toja ran away.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**25th September, 2091**

Of all the unfair things in Shinji Ikari's life, the fact that the Academy has classes on Saturday morning had to be pretty low down the priority list, all things considered. It wasn't as if he wasn't used to it, after all; the Academy back in Toyko-3 had been the same. But this morning, of all mornings, he really didn't enjoy the sight of children who went to other schools who were getting to hang around in normal clothing, not the high-collared black overcoat of the Academy, and make _remarks_ at him and the other students on the maglev.

_I mean, it's not like they even need to be up this early,_ he thought to himself. _For me to see them on the way to school, they'd have had to get up that early, and not chosen to lie in at the weekend. Are they doing it just to rub it in our faces?_

And talking of rubbing in faces, Shinji had been somewhat surprised when the boy who had punched him in the face, and that one with glasses who had been hanging around with the rather attractive Nazzadi girl, came up to him, with a special request. In fact;

"Actually, why are you here?" Shinji asked the human boy, Kensuke. "I mean, you didn't hit me..."

The brown-haired boy blushed slightly, and glanced sideways at Toja. "He said he'd hit me if I didn't come to apologise too," he explained. "It's... it's sort of my fault that he found out, because Taly and me were the ones who sort of worked out a link."

"So why isn't she here?"

Toja gritted his teeth. "I couldn't really threaten her in the same way as Ken, here."

Shinji raised his eyebrows. "Chivalry?"

Kensuke shook his head, with a hint of a grin creeping onto his face. "Nope. She'd kick him in the balls again. She's... she's kinda heavily into her martial arts. 'Specially _hun zuti_."

"We're getting off topic," Toja said somewhat hastily, with what Shinji suspected was a hint of remembered pain creeping into his expression. The boy straightened up again. "Mr Ikari," he said, in a formal manner, "I want you to punch me. So that we'll be even."

"In that case, shouldn't I punch you twi... no, I'm not going to get started on that." Shinji blinked. "Why? I mean, I know why I want to punch you, but why do you want me to want to punch you?"

"See! You want to, so just do it!" The boy's jaw was stiff, his eyes closed.

"But..." Shinji drew back his fist, but paused, wavering. "I... it... it's not the same," he said out loud, trying to work through the mess of feelings and emotions. "I mean, it was sort of my fault."

"Rubbish!" Toja snapped. "It's all my fault. I'm a hot-headed idiot who never thinks about anything. You need to do it, I want you to do it, and it's kinda the only way to be fair!"

The Japanese boy's hand wobbled, moving back and forth. On (and with) one hand, he actually did want to punch this guy. But... this would be in cold blood. It was completely different to snap, and try to attack someone which angry, to just going and punching someone.

"Do it! As hard as you can! Don't hold back!"

_He... he actually wants to be hurt? Why? That doesn't make sense. And... and how dare he force me into this kind of situation! This is just a normal school day, and I'm being forced to think about whether it's okay to hurt someone when they tell you do. Why does this happen to me!_

The blow, as it happened, went low, into the taller boy's stomach, who doubled over with a meaty-sounding _oooof_. Hands on thighs, the other boy began to wheeze, falling to his knees.

"You've got a nasty streak," Kensuke said, shock creeping into his voice. "Right in the gut? Not cool." He paused. "Not cool at all."

Shinji, meanwhile, was staring down at the boy before him, guilt and just a smidgeon of self-satisfaction blended together. The very presence of the self-satisfaction, however, was causing it to get diluted. Because, in the boy's self-image, he wasn't the sort of person who'd do that. And yet he just had.

"Why...the...gut..." croaked out Toja. "Meant... to be face."

"You didn't say that!" protested Shinji.

"I..." he started coughing, "I... thought... obvious."

"Not to me!" Shinji said, wincing. He paused for a moment, before adding, "And... um, well, I didn't want to hurt my hand!"

Toja continued to cough.

"Skulls are hard," Shinji continued, realising how pathetic he sounded.

The Nazzadi boy began to emit a burbling noise. It took a few seconds, before Shinji could work out that it was, in fact, laughter, which grew stronger as Toja pulled himself upright, face still taut with discomfort.

"Nice one," the boy croaked. "Teach me to tell someone to do it as hard as they can, and not hold back."

Kensuke smirked. "That's what she said," he said, almost automatically.

"Shut up, Kensuke."

Shinji stared at the pair. "You're mad," he said, slowly. "You're... you're mad. Utterly, utterly mad."

Toja was still clutching his stomach. "Yeah," he said, looking up, "but at least we're now even." There was something in his eyes that Shinji couldn't recognise. "Listen," he said, "I... um... I got stuck outside... on Wednesday. Not _outside_ outside. But in a surface building. A school."

Shinji felt his stomach boil with sudden terror. "... I," he blinked. "What... happened?" he said softly.

There was a sudden expression of shock on Toja's face. "Oh, no," he said hastily. "No one got hurt. But... um, I saw it."

Shinji relaxed, a sudden rush of adrenaline making him shake. "Don't say things like that," he said. "I don't want to think that I've hurt people."

"No... no, what I mean to say is, right, I saw how that thing you're in is like.

The brown-haired boy grinned, weakly. "Thank you," he said, relief in his voice. He paused. "Uh... why were you stuck outside," he asked, gingerly. "Was it just an evacuation thing, or..."

Toja blushed, a slight darkening of his face. "Um... no," he admitted. "I ran out to look for someone in the class who'd gone missing."

Shinji felt his eyebrows raise without prompting. "That's pretty brave," he ventured. "I mean, I probably wouldn't have the guts to do it."

"No, it was just stupid. It may have looked brave... I just wasn't thinking." The Nazzadi boy blinked. "Can we just put everything behind us?" he asked.

Unnoticed, unobserved, a white-haired girl watched the scene through dead grey eyes, no expression on her frozen face.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Rei Ayanami." The muse's voice was calm, emotionless; disturbingly similar to the subject of discussion, thought Misato with a shudder.

Ritsuko caught the brief twitch of emotion, and nodded, sympathetically. "Pause briefing," she instructed the system. "I know, yes?" she said. "Spend time around her, and you start hearing her voice everywhere," the scientist said, a hint of dark humour in her voice.

"I was _trying_ to make a point, Rits," the Director of Operations said. "Resume briefing... pause briefing." She glared at the blond. "And don't pause my muse without my permission," she added. "Resume briefing."

"The subject is sixteen years old; date of birth: 5th of November, 2074. Subspecies: _Homo sapiens sidoci_. Genetic parents: classified. Subject was recovered in raid on cult organisation aged 4, and, after evaluation, was placed in state custody pending further investigation. Subject was inducted into newly formed Test Pilot programme as the First Child immediately upon programme formation in 2083, following discovery by Project Marduk that she possessed the appropriate characteristic factors. She is the exclusive and designated pilot of Evangelion Unit 00, the Prototype Model. Her current legal guardian is Representative for Europe, Gendo Ikari. The rest of her personal history is classified. Her psychological profiles are classified; a redacted file may be viewed separately. The subject possesses intuitive extranormal waveform manipulation capabilities, as is universal among her subspecies. These capabilities are classified; a redacted file may be viewed separately, and they have all been classified as non-dangerous and non-invasive."

"I think that's enough," said the Major, her tone controlled. "Now, Director of Science, why don't you explain why your Director of Operations has almost no knowledge of one of the assets she has to command?"

Ritsuko sighed. "Misato..."

"Don't 'Misato' me. You've dodged this point before. I saw what happened at the last Unit 00 activation test, and things destabilised in a way that they never have even looked like they might for Shinji or Asuka. The next activation test is scheduled for next Wednesday, and I might be kinda worried that _it might happen again_."

"You presume I have any more knowledge about her," the scientist retorted.

"... well, yes. The Project Marduk is part of the Evangelion Group. That means they report to you."

Ritsuko gritted her teeth. Misato could have both a rather perceptive mind and a highly functional memory when she put her brain to it. "And certain details are sealed even beyond what I can view. Yes, I do know more about her, but those are technical issues. I mean, I could ask for permission to release the details on... on the details of how her medichines react with her immune system, say, but I'm not exactly sure how useful it will be for you, so..."

The black-haired woman ran her hand through her hair. "Sorry, Rits," she apologised. "I'm just a little... worried."

She received a sympathetic nod in return. "I understand. But... please, don't take it out on me. We don't think it should happen again; the issue last time... well, we're not sure what caused it, but we suspect it may have been mental instability in the pilot."

"Mental instability?" echoed Misato. "In Rei?"

"Yes."

"But," the dark-haired woman searched for the right words to use, "from what little I've... that I know of her, she's seemed fairly stable. Not necessarily at the same point of balance as anyone else, of course, but..."

"No. She's... she's disturbed at a deeper level; more that you'd think. And she's sensitive to extranormal phenomena. She might have been affected by the... hah, by the harbingers of Harbinger-3. That kind of thing is not what you want when you're trying to attune to a highly sophisticated ACXB organism."

The New Earth Government Army officer shot a glance at her friend. "You do know that there are already suspicions that the failed activation test was what _caused_ Asherah to show up, yes?" she said bluntly.

"That's ridiculous," Dr Akagi replied, with the same lack of prevarication. "We have had failed activation tests for all the completed Evangelions. And Harbinger-level threats failed to show up each time. You're just displaying classic observer bi..." she was interrupted by the muse, and a simultaneous vibration of something in Misato's pockets.

"Major Katsuragi to Communications Room 13. Major Katsuragi to Communications Room 13. This is a High Urgency call; ID number 05-02-65-32-98. Major Katsuragi to report immediately to Communications Room 13."

"Oh-five, oh-two, sixty-five, thirty-two..." muttered Misato to herself, as she straightened up. "That's the Unit 02 code. And 13 is one of the q-lines." She blinked. "I'm off; this is important. That's directly from," she pulled the PCPU out of her pocket, "yes, I thought so. That's Captain Martello's code, and it's got... it's got an override-seal from Vice Marshall Slavik himself." Almost reflexively, she tucked her hair back behind her ears, and adjusted her collar slightly. "I'll see what it is."

"I hope it's nothing important," Ritsuko said. Both women could hear the doubt in her voice.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The remains of Harbinger-4, Eshmun, were pooled in two separate vile, incoherent messes at the bottoms of Containment Chambers 09 and 10, in the Vault. It had been blown in half by that first ambush, after all, so they had been recovered separately. The fact that the whole creature would have been too large to fit in either of the chambers was only an added bonus, and had led to several new planned engineering projects which would be large enough. And 'pooled' was the operative word; with the death of the creature, it had lost cohesiveness at a dramatic rate, the beast decaying and rotting, as its structure disintegrated. Perhaps worse, its elevated r-state was decaying back down to a 1-state, throwing out high-energy variant r-state particles, in a parallel to more conventional radiation.

There were no people down in the Vault, working on the studies. It just wasn't safe, even in full ANaMiNBC gear and added sorcerous warding. They were getting through teleoperated drones at a prodigious rate as the circuitry and hulls gave way under the bombardment.

Of course, Dr Akagi wasn't too unhappy about this. A little bit annoyed at the fact that she wasn't getting to carry out a proper dissection, but she could live without exposure to high-energy high r-state radiation. And because she had not been so exposed, she would continue to do so. "We're discovering all new things about high variant r-state physics," she 'explained' to Shinji and Misato, standing by the vast autocensored screen that was giving a sight into the progress in the vacuum-filled rooms. "The CCs are all set up as high end particle detectors for exactly this reason. I mean, the MAGI say they've seen a 512-state proton for the first time ever, and its behaviour means that we've just shown Imonike was right all along, and Juarez was wrong."

"But what have you found out about the Harbinger?" Misato asked, hands in pockets. Once again, she was in a more formal version of her normal uniform, because the NEG had other, more senior officers on-site, and she was not enjoying it. She would really rather be dressed normally... well, actually, she'd rather be back in her pilot's suit which were _really_ comfortable, but that wasn't an option anymore, and she wasn't on the frontlines.

Ritsuko smoothed down her lab coat, a garment which, given what they were dealing with, would only really protect her from a coffee-based accident, and glanced over at the screen. "Not as much as we might have liked," she admitted. "From what we can tell, from the state the remains are in, there was internal differentiation of layers, but only one thing which approximates an organ, as we would know it. Of course, that matches up with the feed from Unit 01, doesn't it, Shinji?"

The boy, who had been drifting along in the mists of confusion, trying to understand and doing poorly at that goal, blinked, and refocused his attention away from the almost-hypnotic sludge which both parts had degraded into. "Um... excuse me?" he asked.

"There weren't any internal organs in Harbinger-4, were there? Apart from the core-equivalent?" the scientist asked rhetorically.

"Not that I can remember," the boy said, slowly. "But... well, I wasn't thinking that clearly."

"Yes... well, that is somewhat understandable." Ritsuko shrugged. "Anyway, the current hypothesis is that the Harbinger we see is akin to a puppet vessel for a greater being which exists in greater-than-three spatial dimensions. Hence, it really doesn't need anything beyond a core-equivalent, in the same way that your little finger doesn't need lungs or a heart or... or anything apart from the connective tissue and blood vessels and the like, which in this analogy is the core-equivalent."

Shinji stared down at the screen. A spider-like robot, all its many limbs dedicated manipulators, slowly descended from the ceiling, trailing its thread of power-cable behind it. Anchoring itself onto the outer carapace, it began to cut at the material. Despite the degradation, it really wasn't getting anywhere. "I can't believe I killed that thing," the boy said to himself. "Is that what we really have to fight. Well," he paused, "I say 'we', but... never mind. Why didn't the outer shell-thing fall apart in the same way?" he asked, louder.

"That's a good question, Shinji," Ritsuko replied. "We're... not sure. It might be that it's only decaying due to r-state relaxation, compared to the rest, which is liquefying. We've actually got what might be structures in the outer carapace, which... well, it would suggest a biology completely unlike anything we're familiar with."

"No, really?" muttered Misato, who was ignored.

"We're just having problems taking samples," Ritsuko admitted. "Even when we do manage to extract specimens, the effects of removing them from the still-altered r-state of the region around the body, down to a 1-state environment, just massively speeds up the decay." She paused. "They might be designed... well, I say 'designed', but that doesn't mean intent... they might be _there_ to enhance AT-Field generation. The properties of the regions that we suspect there might be structures... well, I don't even know where to begin."

"Oh," Misato said, a sudden glimmer of understanding in her eyes, "this is the kind of matter is sort of like a wave and sort of like a particle, right?"

Dr Akagi fixed the other woman with a long hard stare. "Yes, Misato. It does, in fact, display properties exhibited by both classical particles and waves, at least at the quantum level. In fact, we have a super-special name for that very special kind of matter. It's called... matter."

"Oh."

"I mean, that isn't even arcane physics. It's just quantum physics. That's barely a step above classical mechanics."

"Mbneah." Misato flapped a hand at the scientist. "There's no need to be condensing."

"You mean 'condescending'," Ritsuko replied automatically, to a slight smirk from the black-haired woman. "Although I can try to explain condensed matter physics to you if you..." her eyes narrowed. "I see what you did there."

Shinji quite deliberately said nothing. It seemed to be serving him well.

"Hey! Akagi!" someone called from behind them. Ritsuko shuddered, her face falling. Taking a deep breath, she turned around, her face set in a mask of professional neutrality.

"Dr Robinson," she said, with a nod, to the woman, her skin so dark she could have almost passed for a Nazzadi. That illusion was shatterd by her eyes, a human brown, with the beginnings of crow's feet marking their edges. "Doctor Malia Robinson, Deputy Director of Science for Project Engel," she said, her voice lowered, to her two companions.

"Hey! How's it going, Ritsuko?" the other woman asked, in her native Nigerian accent.

"Fine. Just fine," the blond said, just slowly enough that it could not be taken as being rude. She paused. "This is Major Misato Katsuragi, Director of Operations for Project Evangelion," she added, gesturing to the black-haired woman, while subtly trying to move to divert attention away from Shinji.

"Pleased to meet you," Misato said, stepping forwards to shake the other woman's hand.

"Katsuragi... Katsuragi, oh yes," Dr Robinson said, and Misato's face stiffened slightly at that. "You're with the Army, yes? Which wing? I'd have to say, I'd have thought that they'd have had a Navy person for Director for Evangelion, given the strategic value of those things?" Her intonation turned something which wasn't really a question into one.

"I used to be a mech pilot," Misato explained. "It was decided that the actual command skills required for an operation involving the Units is more like those needed for land-based mecha than a naval ship, or even someone with the Marines."

"'Specially since the Marines are cutting down on their mecha component," Malia said with a nod. "Pleased to meet you too, by the way; I'll have to get proper communications set up with our DDoO Europe. I suspect you'll end up having to work with us a lot, given how much we get used as spearhead forces, which, from what I've heard from the Eastern Front, worked really well for you today." She smiled. "It's nice to see our older brother Project getting some respect."

"Parent _Group_," Ritsuko muttered, just loud enough for Shinji to hear. Out loud, she added, "So, how is your Project's research into Eshmun going?"

The other woman grinned, in a brilliant half-crescent of perfect teeth. "Amazingly. The other half of the torso; the part the Navy and static defences blew up, not the bit you got? Well, we've found several clusters of unhatched eggs. It's a god-send, even above the live specimens. Anton's got me heading up the work on the new Species, after my successes with the Hamshall and the Ish. And just looking at the combat data from the parent organism," she let out a thin whistle, "well, damn. I think the Shamshel... that's what we're calling the Species by the way... it's going to be an _excellent_ super-heavy gunship, and that's," the grin turned slightly predatory, "a tactical role that the Migou are going to tearing out their cilia out over."

"If you can get it working," Ritsuko pointed out.

"Well, yes, that's always the _caveat emptor_, and all that." Dr Robinson frowned. "I don't mean _caveat emptor_. I think I mean _ceteris paribus_." She shrugged, an expansive gesture. "How are you doing?"

Dr Akagi smiled too, a slightly sickly expression. "We have several core fragments; damaged, of course, because it was necessary for the _Evangelion_ to kill the target, but we're already getting data from them." Well, what the MAGI were actually returning was 601 "Insolubility" errors, even with an Operator diving with them, but that was data. Of a sort. "The r-states that thing was operating in, though... you know we've probably just disproved Juarez from its decay patterns."

"No way." The other woman blinked. "Let me guess. 512-state proton deflection?"

"Yes."

"That was always going to be the big test for Juarez. Guess that leaves us with Imonike, then. Which is... kinda annoying. The maths is less elegant," Dr Robinson said, with a pout. "Well, I really look forwards to you publishing. As in... actually, please do it soon. If we're going to be dealing with it these things, then our team is really going to need your data on the behaviour of high r-state elem-n-ents."

"Of course," Ritsuko said, the corner of her mouth twitching. "

They watched the Deputy Director of Science for Project Engel depart.

"I _like_ her," Misato remarked. Shinji secretly agreed; the other woman had seemed pleasant enough, and, well, now that he actually had to fight against these things, the term "super-heavy gunship" was being linked to "more stuff shooting at the thing that's trying to kill me," and "more targets for the thing that's trying to kill me," to his approval.

Ritsuko rolled her eyes. "You would," she said. "God, I hate that woman. Just... so... damn... _bubbly_. And she's from Engel, of course. She's like fingernails on the blackboard of my mind."

There was silence. Then;

"So, what's written on the blackbo..." began the black-haired woman.

"Shut up, Misato. The blackboard is not important. It is a metaphor."

The black-haired woman glared at her. "I get that," she said, somewhat snippishly. "I was just trying to inject some levity into the place."

"Levitate in your own time." The scientist pinched the bridge of her nose. "I'm sorry, that was uncalled for. But if I can dodge Dr Robinson until the analysis is done, I'll be a lot less stressed."

But Shinji was no longer paying attention. Over on the other side of the room from the screen, he could see his father on the other side of a window.

He was _smiling_.

He was talking to Rei Ayanami, her arm still in a cast, but all other signs of her injuries gone.

She was smiling too, a faint curl up of the side of her lips.

Down by his side, Shinji's hands balled into fists. Through narrowed eyes, he stared at the scene, as the Director of Science and Director of Operations droned at each other about irrelevencies that the boy no longer cared about.

His father _never_ smiled at him. He never even _talked_ to him unless he wanted something.

This was _unfair_.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**26th September, 2091**

The two boys stood before the door. It was a normal-looking door. No fanged maw, biohazard warning symbol, disturbingly organic sphincter or inscription of "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate" adorned the portal.

It was still somewhat intimidating.

"You ring," muttered Toja.

"No, you," was Kensuke's devastatingly scathing and witty retort.

They continued to stand there.

The bespectacled boy rubbed his arm. "Man, security is tight here," he said, idly. "They actually did a blood check, not just a skin-scraping, just at the dome entrance. And here..."

"Look, are you going to do it?" the Nazzadi growled. "No. Then I guess I'll just have to use my superior manliness to... argh."

The door had opened, without anyone touching it. This would have been sinister, had it not been for the fact that a dark-haired, and very attractive, woman with Japanese features stood in the doorway, one hand still raised to the interior controls. "Yes?" she asked.

Both boys immediately stood to attention. And it would be crass to mention that this applied in both senses of the word. "Um..." eventually Kensuke managed to stammer. "Uh, we were wondering if Shinji was here."

Toja suddenly paled, a change which went entirely unnoticed with his complexion. Was this the right address? He'd got it off Hikary, who had been rather approving of his 'attempts to be nice to a person at an unfamiliar school', which just indicated that word of the punching incident hadn't made its way to her. He could tell that, because he could still hear, and was not shell-shocked from several hours of shouting from an angry class representative.

Luckily, the woman smiled. "I'm afraid he's out at the moment," she said.

"Oh," said Kensuke, his gaze descending, before rising back to her face with a regularity that Galileo could have admired. "Do you know when... um... when he'll be back?"

She shook her head, ponytail whipping behind her. "No, I'm afraid not," she said. "Why do you want him?"

"We were going to see a film," Toja said, self-consciously running a hand through his hair, "and we were wondering if he wanted to call. To come. I meant come. With us."

She favoured them with another smile. "I see." The smile shifted into a frown. "Why didn't you just call him, text him, or... well, do it any way that wouldn't mean that you end up having to go through the security at this place."

"We didn't know about the security," Kensuke said, grinning. "And he didn't reply to the email to his Academy account, and we couldn't find his number in the public lists. So we thought we'd just come over and ask."

The woman blinked once, and then nodded. "Oh, yes. Yes." She paused, as if considering things. "I can get you it," she said, after some deliberation.

Kensuke nodded enthusiastically. "Yes please. Thank you, Mrs Ikari."

The temperature suddenly dropped by about twenty degrees; the arcology air, kept a little cooler in this residential dome, suddenly freezing against the skin. Misato narrowed her eyes.

"I am not Mrs Ikari," she said, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice. "I'm Shinji's guardian." She paused. Yes, they deserved it. How dare they suggest that! There was no way she could be Shinji's mother; did she look like the kind of person who'd have a teenage pregnancy like that; the kind of irresponsible mother who wouldn't even screen their birth? She sincerely hoped not. She didn't look a day over thirty!

That was completely separate, in her mind, from the fact that she was chronologically thirty one.

"Yes," she continued, "I'm Misato Katsuragi, Shinji's guardian. And you would be," the overlay in her Eyes gave her their names, as well as a considerable batch of personal information, "Kensuke Aida and Toja Suzuhari. Your names have come up in connection to a certain..." she gave a deliberate pause, "... incident I was made aware of." A series of clicks emanated from her hands held behind her back, which absolutely in no way whatsoever brought to mind, say, the sound of breaking bones. "If I hear of any more such incidents, there will be... consequences. If Shinji's surveillance team suspects any more incidents might maybe be about to happen, the consequences will be much more immediate, though no more painful in the long run." Misato leaned forwards, smiling. Unlike her previous smiles, it was not a pleasant smile. It displayed a little too much incisor for even the comfort of a Nazzadi, let alone a human. "I'm pleased we could have this chat." And then her demeanour returned to normal. "So... shall I just get his gridlink?"

The details were given, and the two boys were left standing, once again, in front of the closed door. On the inside, Misato leant against it with a thump which was not transmitted.

_I'm sorry, but what? 'Mrs Ikari'? It says my name next to the door! Damn teenage boys and their predictable attentions! I mean, seriously, did they think I was old enough to be his mother? Or, in fact, that I was _married _to the Representative? I mean, it's possible_ she hastily added mentally, _that he could be a very nice person and a real charmer, and the mere fact that I haven't ever seen a trace of it in his technocratic bones... oh, and the fact that Shinji and him have real issues... is just a persona, but, seriously? There's a limit to the benefit of the doubt. I don't think I know anyone who's actually spent time around him who'd go throw themselves at him. Damn teenage boys and their... stupidness._

She sighed again. She didn't look that old, did she? An innocent wastepaper bin received an almighty punt, which did make Misato feel better, although it failed to make up for either the blow to herself image, or the sudden and more immediate pain in her foot.

She would probably have been somewhat reassured to hear the conversation on the other side of the door, and she would have, had the door not been soundproofed and designed to take an RPG without breach.

"Wow," Kensuke managed.

"Wow," Toja agreed.

"Wow," Kensuke expanded, before switching to a more conventional vocabulary. "That was... so hot. Shinji is living with a woman with breasts and legs and... and everythingnessocity like that."

Toja slapped the other boy on the back, a little bit harder than might have been needed. "Yeah," he agreed. "There's no justice in the world."

"You can say that again! He gets a giant robot and a totally hot chick as his roommate. I mean... that figure, and she's military too... that attitude." He flipped out his PCPU. "The figure alone would be enough to get her the coveted AAA rating, but the way she did those warnings... I think she's going to be the first AAA+... no, AAA +!" he said, marking it down. "What did she say her name was... oh, it's right by the door."

"... okay, I found that talk a bit scary," Toja admitted.

"You just don't appreciate the sublime beauty of a woman in uniform," the bespectacled boy said.

"She wasn't in uniform."

"She was. In my mind."

It should probably be noted at this point that the image in the boy's head would not have been a very practical combat uniform; quite apart from the lack of ANaMiNBC protection, which would have instantly doomed the wearer, the heels were eminently impractical, and the exposed midriff, low-cut neck and miniskirt would have _utterly_ ruined what little concealment the garment provided.

"Well... she's probably not going to come out again," Toja said, with reluctance. "You phone him, and tell him about the film." He paused. "'Course, he might actually be doing something... she did say he was out. At least we tried."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The maglev ride was smooth and silent, as it always was; the only noise the hiss of air around the train. The only outside forces felt by Shinji Ikari, immersed as he was by the music in his headphones, were the accelerations in and out of stations, and, beyond that, the slight, omnipresent rotation, as the Fifth Circle Line looped around the city. Unlike many of the other train lines, the various Circle lines, all the way from the First, at the top down to the lowest, remained at the same depth; a cyclone and anticyclone which ran all hours of the day.

"This is Ellersmer Court," the recorded voice played. "This is a Fifth Circle Line train, towards Whitborough Dome. Please allow passengers to leave the train, before you board."

The movement of people, getting off. The movement of people, getting on. They flowed, and yet, to the eyes of the brown-haired boy, sitting here, eyes on the other people for lack of a better place to stare, he could discern no change.

With one last blast of trumpets, the current song came to an end. Slowly, quietly, the thin, gentle melodies of the violins gave the start to the next one.

"_Krehaba estel soli footbali serakroni sanginoji abismi,_" a loud-mouthed Nazzadi, slurring his words somewhat, proclaimed, "_Chelsi... absul hi abisakroni adisi radski!_"

"_Zy kokrehakrony,_" a woman standing next to him, in the same bright blue shirt, agreed. "_Absul footbalazi... serakroni suluperukredoneyakroni , absul serabi suluperukredoneyabi, pla absul serakausi suluperukredoneyakausi._"

_I'm sure you had fun,_ Shinji thought, irritation in his mental voice, as he turned up the volume, to drown them out, _even if you thought the game was bad and the players are overpaid. But, seriously, can you please talk more quietly?_

He didn't say anything out loud, of course. Not only were they both bigger than him, but they looked drunk. There was no point in a confrontation; they would be gone soon, and he'd still be here, so what did it matter? In fact, yes, they had open cans of beer with them. A little voice in Shinji's head gloated at the fines they'd be facing, because the watcher LAIs monitoring the CCTV cameras would have seen that and flagged their faces, but, still, it was irritating.

Shinji sated his annoyance by rolling his eyes at the girl sitting opposite him on the train, accompanied with a sideways glance at the pair. The dark-haired girl, who looked to be about his age, merely stared back without a change in expression, which suddenly made him feel more embarrassed. She was sitting next to an _amlata_, built like an athlete, and Shinji suddenly had a sinking feeling that he was accidentally flirting with someone's (very attractive, a treacherous part of his brain noted) girlfriend. Actually, they both looked vaguely familiar; he thought that he might have seen there somewhere around the Academy.

_Oh no. Just when I thought the situation couldn't get any more embarrassing._ To escape any further mishaps, he dropped his gaze, staring down at the screen of his PCPU, and just hoping that the world would leave him alone.

"This is Little Delhi," the recorded voice played. "This is a Fifth Circle Line train, towards Whitborough Dome. Please allow passengers to leave the train, before you board."

As they pulled out from the station, Shinji hazarded a look up. _Phew_, he thought, _the football people got off. And the girl, too._ That social minefield had been evaded, even if her boyfriend had stayed on the train. He flicked the volume back down, and sat back, as the music of Beethoven filled his ears.

_*bleep*_ "Shinji has mail."

Or at least it did, before his muse decided to inform him of it, subverting his music to do so. He really hoped it was something important to bother disturbing him. Then again, Ari was running high-end anti-spam filters, so she did tend to catch pretty much everything that wasn't important.

He checked. It was a... well, an almost wary-sounding message from the human boy from yesterday, Kensuke, asking if he wanted to come see a film with Toja. They were meeting in Dome 3, in the Eddington cluster.

A few presses, to get to the map, and... yes, he had thought so. If he got off at Sideware, and then took the inclinator up to Third Tier, he'd be in the right dome. Shinji shrugged. It was going to be easy for him to do it, and he'd have to think up a reason for why he didn't, which would be harder than just doing it. If he were to be perfectly honest, it wasn't like he was doing anything vitally important. Just as long as he was back at Misato's for six, because they were having dinner with Dr Akagi...

Why not?

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The room was a vast cylinder, rising far above, just as it could, through diamond plates in the floor, be seen to plummet far below. The full height was unseen; the white light from the lit areas ended before this hollow space, deep below the depths of the Earth did. It was not a pure white, though, because for every light, there was a path which took it through the transparent sphere, divided into eighths by the metal bands which ran around its equators, which hung in the centre of the room. The orb refracted the light which shone through it with an uncanny radiance which spoke of its adamant nature, and was filled with a blue fluid which could be seen to move by the patterns of bent light, much like light shone through waves in an aquarium. The chamber was suspended by a cobweb of threads no thicker than a spider's web, the other, more visible profusion of flowing cables and arcane, in both senses of the word, equipment there for its function, not for its structure.

And speaking of its structure, if one were to look into the onion-like layers of the globe, and at the walls of this place with an electron microscope, one might see the warding circles, inscriptions and other anchors for sorcerous containment procedures which covered every square micrometer.

Rei Ayanami floated naked in the warm tank of fluid, eyes closed, hair drifting around her like seaweed. Curled into a ball, she twitched slightly, mouth moving with unheard words. Around her, the pale blueness swirled, cycled frequently to prevent her from depleting the oxygen. It was LCL, true, but not LCL as used in the entry plugs of the Evangelions; this was, quite apart from being a different colour, thinner, and, in the areas away from her body, almost an aerosol, never quite sure on whether it was a liquid or a gas.

It was, after all, designed for a rather different purpose.

A twitch, and she spasmed, straightening to full rigidity with her spine curving back, an unseen jet of fluid expelled from her lungs to send the blueness swirling and twirling. Slowly, slowly, she curled up again, only for, only a few minutes later, the process to repeat, her mouth open in an unheard, or perhaps, ignored, scream.

With a lack of care in her eyes, Dr Ritsuko Akagi flicked her gaze up, the light painting her harcontact-lit eyes blue-within-blue, before returning back to the feed, to deal with more important matters. Eventually, though, she was satisfied.

"Prepare for chamber evacuation," she ordered the girl. In response, mutely (or maybe not? How could one tell, when no sound seemed to escape the sphere?), the girl swam into a position which would leave her on her hands and knees when the vessel was cycled, as, indeed it did, the LCL drained away and replaced by air.

Kneeling, a gush of blue-to-clear liquid rushed out of Rei's mouth, as she coughed it out of her lungs, only for the fluid to effervesce and boil away before it hit the floor, the unhealthy-looking mist pulled out of the chamber too.

"Cycling chamber," Ritsuko noted.

"That went well," Ritsuko told her. "As far as I can see, there were no issues with this first test after your synchronicity accident." She paused. "Did you feel anything different or wrong?"

"I did not, Dr Akagi," the girl replied, hands still by her side, making no attempts to cover herself. Ristuko handed her a paper robe, which would last her until she got to the decontamination showers, to wash out the remains of the LCL-variant which still tinted her hair blue and coated her skin in a thin layer which made it look even colder than usual.

"Good." The blond paused. "The Unit 00 restart test is on Wednesday. You are to attend school as normal; it is not scheduled until 16:00."

"I understand, Dr Akagi." Rei sneezed, the thin wisp of blue fog dispersing before the older woman could even recoil.

Ritsuko had the feeling that she was forgetting something. "We will schedule the next session for... the third of October," she said, making note. "That's next Sunday."

"Yes, Dr Akagi." The girl continued to stand there, unmoving since she had donned the paper gown, no hint of movement from her own conscious volitation. The sneeze didn't count.

"That will be all, Rei," Ritsuko said.

"I understand, Dr Akagi." The girl paused, shifting slightly. "Dr Akagi?" she asked, raising one hand slightly.

"Yes, Rei?" the scientist asked, with a hint of interest.

"Why did you deem it necessary to have me stand-by for the Harbinger-4 incident, when I had not successfully synchronised with Unit 00 without a synchronicity incident? It was not necessary to have me do so, and any attempt to have me do so would have had unknown success." If there was curiosity in the girl's voice, Ritsuko could not read it. "It was not time then, and it was not necessary."

"Because we couldn't be sure that Test Pilot Ikari would be successful," Ritsuko explained, any interest she could have before drowned by the... the Rei-ness of the question. "If he had been incapacitated, it would have been necessary to eliminate the Harbinger, and, as a secondary objective, salvage the Test Model."

"But it was not necessary."

"No, it turned out not to be necessary," Ritsuko admitted. "To be honest, we did not expect Shinji to perform... well, to perform well. He's been a bit of a surprise."

"He has surprised you?" the girl replied flatly.

"Yes. Compared to the Second Child, the Third is woefully under-trained, and yet he's a prodigy in the field of AT-Field manipulation. It's a surprise."

"The Third Child. Acedia. Test Pilot Ikari. Shinji Ikari. He is the son of Representative Gendo Ikari, and Dr Yui Ikari."

The scientist waited for the girl to continue. She did not do so.

"You can go, Rei," she said, framing the statement as an order.

"Dr Akagi."

"Yes, Rei?" she asked, frustration creeping into her voice.

"Why are you surprised?"

The woman blinked, the lit harcontacts painting her eyelids purple as she blinked. She really wanted a smoke right now. "Because he's defying the predictions made on you, the Second Child, and the other failed test subjects," she said. "Now, if you'd just..."

Rarely, almost uniquely, Rei interrupted her. "I did not mean that," she said. "What I meant was, 'Why are you surprised?'"

Ritsuko frowned. "I just told you."

There might have been a hint of sadness in Rei's eyes as she answered, the doctor thought. "You did not understand. I am not surprised." And with that said, she turned, and headed for the exit that would lead her to the showers.

Then again, that might just have been excessive and wilful anthromorphism, the woman thought with a hint of spite.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The sirens were wailing with the high pitched scream of a newborn infant. Most of what could be seen on the mainscreen was the red of destroyed assets; prime among them, the flanks of capital-grade charge beams now entirely silenced.

A woman screamed; a high-pitched shriek of terror. "Contact!" she managed. "C-c-contact!"

"My god," a young man, his temples still streaked with grey despite his age, muttered, staring at the screen in front of him. "God! No! It's... it's still coming! It just came out of nowhere! Why didn't you detect it?"

Her face streaked with sweat, the Captain in charge of the facility ran in, her red eyes narrowed. "Report!" she barked. "What the hell's going on? It's hell on earth outside!"

"C-captain!" the man stammered. "An unknown object... maybe two hundred metres in diameter... just _appeared_ in low earth orbit. And that's only after it destroyed the defences. We think it must have had some kind of arcane field protecting it from detection!"

"Impossible!" the Captain snapped. "Nothing that large could be warded against detection in that..." and her face fell. "No," she said softly, expression suddenly wracked with fear. "They're back, aren't they?"

"I can't say. But... but they're launching smaller objects. We can't stand against them." The man looked up, tears in her eyes. "We just can't. We couldn't see them. Oh, God, why? What does science exist for!"

"Stow your bellyaching," the Captain snapped. "I'll tell you what science is there for! It's there for truth, for beauty, and for the realisation of the imminent potential in all things! And, most importantly, it's there for giving us tools, whether to find out more about the world, or killing those who would kill us. Because," the _nazzady_ said, breaking the glass on the wall to remove a fire axe, "the Migou may have made me, and their Loyalists may have called us monsters when we rebelled. But let me tell you this. I've read _Frankenstein_ since then! And it's in the nature of so-called monsters to destroy their makers!" She pointed up at the screen. "Look at that! Tower 07, by the Elder Thing City, is still operational! It's just not firing! So we're going to go there, and start it up again! For Earth! For Human and Nazzadi alike! And for the honour of the Antarctica Defence Forces!" She grabbed an automatic grenade launcher from a rack. "Saddle up, men, because the 27th of December, 2073, is a day which the bugs are going to remember for a very long time!"

There was a cheer from the soldiers huddled in the room, and a mass checking of weapons.

"You're... mad," the desk operator shouted. "It's minus 50 out there! And they're still bombing!"

The Captain glanced back over her shoulder. "Then the fireballs will keep us warm."

"I thought I said I didn't want to go see a film about military stuff," Shinji muttered along the aisle to the other two, as patriotic music swelled.

Toja looked uncomfortable, as he leant forwards. "Uh... yeah, sorry about this," he whispered back, his eyes reflecting the light like a cat's in the darkness. "I... would rather have gone to see something else, too. But he," he jerked his head towards Kensuke, who was sitting in the middle, "had already paid for the tickets."

"But it's not even that good," Shinji hissed. "I've seen this story before. And the script is terrible."

"Shush, you two," said Kensuke, who was still avidly staring at the screen. "This is awesome. You do know, right, that this is all Live Action, no CGI at all? It's amazing! They used real military equipment, even old stuff from the start of the war for everything. I've never seen such a realistic use of conventional explosives to fake a nuclear blast."

The other two boys stared at him. "You mean you didn't see if the plot was any good?" Shinji managed.

"Why?" Kensuke frowned. "It's really pretty."

Toja's palm collided with his forehead. "Last time I let you buy tickets," he muttered. "Next time, we're going to see Snake Fist IV."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Shinji was in a mixed mood as he got home. Some of the parts of the film, the ones which hadn't been full of laughable dialogue or pretty explosions had been a little too close to home for his preferences. He'd heard that kind of controlled panic in the voices of other people, in the Evangelion Group, in training. He'd looked away at those points, especially when the bombardment had begun.

Of course, the events of December 2073, the so-called "First Strike", had been a Migou attack against the Antarctican polar defences, the first blow in the Second Arcanotech War, which would properly begin the next year as the Migou Hive Ship arrived complete with escorting fleet. The first landings had been in Antarctica, which had not even been contested thanks to the damage done by the First Strike. But at least it had been a Migou thing, not anything to do with Harbingers or anything like that, so that had numbed it a little, disassociated it a little from what they made him do. _Hah_, Shinji thought, _if I couldn't do that, I basically couldn't watch anything._

He checked his watch; good, yes, he was still back before the deadline at six. Only a short search was needed to find his keys, which weren't actually mechanical keys, and the door slid open.

The... it wasn't even a scent in the air anymore, more a taste, hit him in the face like a fist. A sensation which he was, regrettably, familiar with. Coughing, choking, he stepped back outside, and sucked in a breath of clean arcology air.

It, whatever it was, was even making his eyes water, just from the smell. Taking a tentative sniff, he could smell burning paper, chilli... yes, there was certainly chilli, maybe some kind of curry powder stuff... and that was when his endurance gave out, and he retreated back to safety.

"Ari," he instructed his muse, pulling out his PCPU, "phone Misato." If she didn't respond, he should probably start getting worried, because peeking his head inside, he could see what looked like hints of smoke. Well, there would have to be. There had to be some point where a smell stopped being a smell, and started being a smoke, or maybe a vapour. Shinji couldn't quite remember the difference between the two, from Chemistry.

There was a sound of sizzling and bubbling from the other end of the line, as Misato picked up her PCPU, and, using that peculiar tone of voice which people use when they're holding the handset between their shoulder and the side of their head, said, "Heya, Shinji! I was starting to wonder when you'd call. Where are you?"

"Outside." Either she was in a full medieval dungeon, complete with boiling oil, or she was probably in the kitchen, Shinji was forced to conclude.

"Oh. Let me just turn that down... wrong way... down! 'Kay. 'Kay. Right." She paused. "Oh, right? Why? Are they not letting you through security? Your card should still be synched with your profile, right?"

Shinji shook his head, briefly wondered who he was shaking his head at, given that he was on the phone, and said, "No. I mean...right outside the entrance to the flat. I've got it open... are you alright in there?" he asked, with some anxiety. "I can smell smoke. Is there a fire?"

"Not anymore!" Misato said, cheerfully. "There was a _leee~eeetle_ accident with some chilli I was frying with the beans, but that's all okay."

The boy relaxed. "That's good, because..."

"... and the packaging is totally extinguished!" Misato added. "Although who'd sell real chillies in a paper bag like that, I'd like to know," she added in a darker voice. "You can't microwave it at all, even though it looks like you should be able to!"

"Okay." Shinji blinked, lost for words. "Right." _She's cooking she's cooking she'd cooking_ a little voice in his head wailed, but he managed to keep it away from his vocal cords.

He could hear Misato humming tunelessly, as something sizzled. "So, Shinji, did you have fun today?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. "Um... well, the film wasn't that good, but, yes."

"How were your friends?"

Shinji wasn't quite sure that he'd chose to describe them as friends quite yet; associates, certainly, with a view to a potential upgrade later, but you really couldn't say that when less than a week ago, one of them had punched you.

"Fine."

"They dropped 'round, you know?" Misato mentioned, an innocuous tone in her voice. "I had a talk with them in my capacity as Director of Operations... which was not what I wanted to do on a Sunday, 'cause I managed to get a day off... and I don't think you'll have any more trouble with them."

Yes, Shinji did know. Mainly because when the other two had asked what he had been doing, he had ended up explaining why he had got into the habit of just occasionally going out, and riding the Arconnect for hours at a time. It was something he'd done back in Toyko-3, too, because sometimes he just had to get away from people, to relax, and a house with one excitable little girl, and one _very_ excitable little girl, was not a place where you could do such a thing.

And then he had made the mistake of using the line, 'And sometimes Misato is a bit exhausting to be around', which had been interpreted as two teenage boys, who believed that a _double entendre_ could only have one meaning, would interpret it. There had been much discussion of the attractiveness of his guardian from the other two parties involved, with no appreciation of the fact that she was a slob, even when he explicitly pointed it out.

Shinji just _knew_ this was going to get annoying.

"But... uh, Shinji, it would probably be easier if you'd come in, you know," Misato added. "I mean, I could do with some help, and some of us have been working hard in the kitchen." Shinji could smell it. If she'd been working hard in there, she hadn't been working at cooking something edible.

No, that wasn't fair, he corrected himself. She hadn't been succeeding at working at cooking something edible.

"Um, okay, I'll be in a moment," he said, as he disconnected. No, thinking of it, a more appropriate descriptor would be 'lied'. He was just going to wait out here for a while, let the air cycle a bit, before he'd come in, and try to help salvage dinner.

"Oh, hello Shinji!" called out Dr Akagi from behind him, the click of her heels a solid sound. He turned, noting that he didn't think he'd actually seen her out of what he was going to call 'scientist clothing' before. The loose blouse and trousers looked somehow wrong on her, compared to the more common lab coat, or more specialist equipment. And the fact that her harcontacts were off, that her pupils weren't rimmed with a blue gear... that was _odd_. "Why are you out h... oh, God, what is that smell?" Her eyes suddenly widened in recognition. "H-has Misato been cooking?"

Shinji winced. "I think so. And... um, when I called her, she said she'd burned it, too."

Ritsuko nodded. "It smells familiar. She went through about... about three months at university," she explained, "after a... difficult break-up trying to teach herself how to cook." She glanced at Shinji's expression. "No, I don't get the chain of logic behind that decision, either. As I recall, I ended up spending most of my time in the library to avoid the way the flat smelt." Her eyes narrowed. "Well, that and the tissue boyfriends."

"Tissue?" Shinji frowned. "I don't recognise the... what, were they all... oh. I see. Something to sob into and then throw away?" There was still a lot of doubt in his voice.

"Something like that," Ritsuko said diplomatically. The actual line of logic behind the nickname had actually been that they were only good for a few blows, before they were discarded, and more covertly, that they were rather... limp. The blond had not had a high opinion of the other woman's taste in men. "But," she added, changing the topic, "did she say what she was making?"

Shinji shook his head. "No. She said something about beans and chilli, though, and it was sort of implied that she went and bought ingredients, rather than nanofac stuff."

The woman's eyes went blank for a moment. "Right," she said. "In that case, Shinji, do you like Nazzadi food?"

The boy frowned, shifting his posture to lean against the wall a little more. "What kind?" he asked.

"What do you mean, 'what kind'?"

"Well, it's not all the same. At all," Shinji said, with authority. "You've got the Traditionalist stuff (although, even then, you can split by Colony Ship), you've got _nazzadanfrazzi nutrenti_... that's the stuff which takes inspiration from pre-existing human styles, but then twists it, and there's at least one version of that for every culture, and then there's the mess of _ineveti nutrenti_ styles, which... well, you can't really..." he trailed off, as he found the blond staring at him. "Gany, my Nazzadi foster mother, was the one who taught me to cook, and did most of the cooking," he explained. "Um... you kind of pick this stuff up."

"I'd always thought it was just food," Ritsuko said, slowly. She had to confess, that was a side to the Third Child she hadn't seen before. "You know, quite a lot of sauces, tendency to add spices, quite a lot of protein. That kind of food."

Shinji rolled his eyes. "Yes," he said carefully, "in the same way that all Japanese people eat is sushi."

There was a snort from the woman, along with a shrug. "Okay, then. I get your point. But you'll be fine with it?"

"Yes." _Well, as long as it's well done_, he thought, privately.

"In that case," Ritsuko pulled out her PCPU, "... favourites... bookings... yes, they've got space for a party of three." She tapped the screen a few times, before raising one finger to her lips, with a gesture for Shinji to be quiet, and selecting a call. "Hello, Misato," she said, into the device. "Uh, huh." A pause. "Oh, I got out of work a while ago, I've just got to your dome, so I'll be with you in a few minutes. The bookings are for 18:30, so we should be able to make the reservation." Another pause. "Wait, what? I thought we were going out. I was making the bookings, and we'd be meeting at your place... you've been cooking. Sorry, I wouldn't have done it if I'd known, but... no, really, I insist. It is a really good place, I assure you... yes, it does have a good bar," she added, with a glance down at Shinji. "Sorry, we should probably both have been clearer..." she laughed, "... yes, I know exactly what you mean. I'll see you in a few minutes. Bye... bye."

The PCPU was returned to a pocket. "And that, Shinji," she said with a smile, "is how you handle Misato." She winced. "Do me a favour, though. Next time she suggests one of these things, either make sure we're going out, or don't let her in the kitchen. I'm no longer a student, much as I hate to admit it, and I don't think my stomach can cope with it anymore."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"... so I said, 'yes, that _is_ what I said'!" Misato leant back her head, and roared with laughter. Shinji and Ritsuko exchanged embarrassed looks with each other; a situation only made worse by the looks that the other patrons were giving them.

"I happen to like this restaurant," the blond muttered, "and I'd prefer to not be banned."

"Oh, lighten up, Rits!" The woman paused, as she took a mouthful of food. The particular dish she had, _fermoja flakorpa_, was a solid Traditionalist meal, meant to be eaten only with a knife and the pastry provided. Misato was wilfully ignoring that, and had obtained herself a fork, just as she was ignoring the fact that, technically, this meal was only meant to be eaten by men over the age of 27. Of course, that latter detail was ignored by all but the most Traditionalist, but the way that she then went to look for where they kept the condiments would have produced wider annoyance.

Ritsuko shook her head, with a hint of sorrow in the motion, as she watched her friend go.

"Thank you for doing this," Shinji said, as he sliced the leaf-wrapped protein on his plate into thin slices.

The blond flapped a hand at him. "No problem." She paused. "Of course... are you sure that you want to stay with her, though?" she asked. "I mean," the woman blinked, "I know you were placed with her, but... after smelling that cooking, there's no need you need to have your life ruined by a bad flatmate."

Shinji sighed. "I don't really get her," he admitted. "Sometimes, when we're talking... it's like we're not even in the same room. I just don't get how she can be like she is." He shrugged. "It's fine; there's no need to go to all that trouble. I'll survive."

"Well..."

"... if only because I've taken over cooking and cleaning duties," he added, with dark humour.

Ritsuko laughed. "I did the same at university," she admitted. "She's always been, for as long as I've known her, a slob, and a useless chef, and... well, she can only have got worse." The last words were said with a seriousness quite unlike the rest of the sentence.

Shinji frowned. "Huh?"

The scientist's eyes widened, fractionally. "Oh," she mouthed, silently. "You don't know?"

"Know what?"

Ritsuko frowned. "This is awkward. I don't know how much I should really say, as her friend, but..." she licked her lips. "Misato was with the Army... one of the best mecha pilots of her generation," she explained, picking her words carefully. "She made Captain after keeping the remnants of a brigade together and fighting for 23 days after they'd been cut off in the Fall of China, behind Storm lines, with only enough state-nullifiers to keep away state-sickness for fourteen... and even those weren't designed for how high the states were getting as the Leng POLLEN expanded. State-sickness does... funny things to your brain... random excitation of the atoms into higher r-states, and there's only so much that arcanotherapy can do. And then it happens again, when you leave, as they decay back down, and radiate out the energy. She came out lightly. Only the loss of most of her sense of smell and taste." Yes, that would do for an explanation. It wouldn't do to mention everything. For one, they were eating. For two, it was... private.

The boy paled, and poked at his food, suddenly much less hungry. "So," he said, glancing over at Misato, who was leaning over the buffet table, picking up bottles of brightly coloured flavourings, "the reason she puts so much stuff on everything she eats..."

Ritsuko nodded, gravely. "Yes."

"That's horrible." And Shinji now felt terrible for finding it amusing.

"Of course, she still can't cook," Ritsuko pointed out. "But now... she can't even really taste or smell it. She probably couldn't even smell the apartment, and because she has implanted Eyes, they wouldn't have been watering as much. So she does this just to taste anything."

"Oh." There was an uncomfortable silence, which was only broken when Misato put the bottles of red, blue, clear, and red-with-what-looked-like-chilli-seeds-in-it down on the table, and began to liberally apply them.

"Ah, that's better," she said with a grin. "Want to try a bite?" the dark-haired woman said to Shinji, with a grin, proffering her fork forwards.

Shinji shook his head mutely, and poked at the slices on his plate.

"Wimp," she said, with a grin. "A real man should always be willing to try something once."

Ritsuko rolled her eyes. "What, you mean like Pola? As I recall, he let you drive for him once. And then left you."

Misato pouted. "He was terrible in be... being a good passenger," she said, with a sideways glance at Shinji.

"Misato. He was in training to be a fighter pilot."

"So?"

"He'd had the Grade One implants. He shouldn't even have been physically capable of getting motion sick."

"So? He said the real issue was being that low, which just goes to show that he wasn't all that good."

The blond raised her hands. "I'm just saying, there are some things you shouldn't try."

Just then, both womens' PCPUs chimed. "If this is an emergency, I'm going to kill someone," the black-haired woman growled. "Oh, good," she added, after checking, in a lighter tone.

"Yes, I was a little worried, but it seems to have gone smoothly. And not a moment too soon."

"Hmm?" Shinji asked, or at least made a quizzical noise.

"We were having Zero-Two moved from where it was, to another place," Ritsuko said carefully, choosing her words because they were in a public place. Well, she happened to know that a non-negligible fraction of the clients here were Armacham Internal Security guards, but the point still remained. "And that's all I'm going to say... and Misato will say, too." She snapped her fingers, and reached for her handbag, rummaging through it. "Although... that reminds me. She handed him a black sealed tablet, about the size of his hand.

"What is it?"

"Turn it over." He did; the other side was emblazoned with 'Secure Biometric Data package'. There was a transparent window on the front. Through it, he could see a picture of Rei Ayanami. "It's her new Ashcroft Ident Card; her only one expired. Some of her access rights are dependent on this."

"Why me?"

"Maybe because you'll see her at school tomorrow, while I'm working," the woman said, a hint of irritation in her voice.

Shinji could accept that this was a fair point. He glanced back at the picture. It was even taken against a black background; it had been found that _sidoci_ ended up overexposed and bleached when taken against a normal white one. Tilting the sealed package, the familiar face shifted as the angle he was looking at it changed. Idly, he ran one hand along his jaw, squinting at the hologram of the girl.

He looked up to find both women staring at him, smiling faintly. Well, Ritsuko was smiling faintly. Misato had a look on her face which would probably have run afoul of pre-NEG decency laws in some parts of the world.

"What's the matter?" asked the dark-haired woman, a slight lilt in her voice. "You seem to be looking at Rei's face _very_ intently."

"What? Um..."

"Oh, come on, it's sweet," she continued. "This way, you have a nice little excuse to talk to her. And then, maybe..."

"It's not..."

"You might even get to see her house," Misato added, a salacious grin on her face.

Ritsuko blinked suddenly, her face rigid. "There's no need to tease him quite so much," she told her friend, mock-sternness in her voice.

"Yes! Thank you! A sane..."

"... of course, you still need to tease him a little," Ritsuko continued, the grin creeping back in.

Crossing his arms, Shinji slumped back down, his face taking on the caste of a martyr.

"Make sure you remember, Shinji," the blond said. She sighed. "She tries, you know."

"Who?"

"Rei. But... well," she ran one hand over her face, "much like your father, sometimes I think her problem is that she can't see the little things in front of her. She can't see the trees for the forest... and, yes, I mean it that way around. And she's not very good at it."

"At what?"

"Ignorance."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Her handbag made a solid thump on the floor, as Ritsuko dropped it, and turned to check that the security systems had turned back on properly. Satisfied that they had, she slipped her shoes off, and, socks squeaking on the hard material, stepped into her kitchen.

Twelve eyes reflected the light from the hallways back at her, an inhuman yellowish-golden glint. The blond sighed.

"What are you doing in here, sitting around in the dark?" she asked, flicking the light on.

There was a mewing, as the cats protested at the sudden change in their conditions. The woman glanced over at their bowls. Ah. Yes, that made sense. She'd forgotten to fill up the dispenser robot; the football-like unit waiting at its charging point. They had drunk all their water, and would be wanting food. Stepping over to the bowls, she reached down to pick up the dishes, only for her fingers to be batted away by one of the cats.

"Major Zero? What are you doing?" she asked the cat, a handsome Havana Blue tom. Quite unlike their ancestor breed, the Persian Blue, the Havana Blue was actually, blatantly blue. The genetics labs of Cuba had been busy with genetically modified pets even before the First Arcanotech War; the specific breed was one of the oldest ones, an experiment into pet colouration which had tweaked the genes which decided coat colouration, carried on the X-chromosomes. Its fur was an almost-synthetic blue, never encountered in nature, and it had been rather pricy as a result. The Havana Blue was always provided with full geneline history, and the numbers were highly restricted, with a long waiting list.

It had been Ritsuko's little act of rebellion to let the Sergeant breed with Kiko, a perfectly normal mongrel tabby. She didn't care about the genelines, or the fact that she was diluting the stock. Their kittens would thank her, for one, because the cat breeders, even with the aid of genetic modification, tended to keep the lines too closed-in for her liking. Plus, the tortoiseshell from the litter had been _adorable_, its spiky fur a mottled grey, orange, black and blue.

The cat mewed at her, staring at her with its red eyes, and batted at her hand again. The human sighed. "Do you want foot or not?" she said, as she straightened up. The cat trotted out of the kitchen, waiting for her at the door. "Okay then," she said to the cat, "be that way."

A series of splashes of water was followed by the rattling sound of her filling up the dispenser robot. Shortly afterwards, she emerged from the kitchen, carrying a cat under each arm, because they had insisted at batting at the ball-like robot which was trying to fill their feeding bowls, rather than actually let it give them it. For all that she liked her cats, they could be rather stupid.

Making her way through to her box-like study, she found the large blue cat occupying her chair. She'd left the door open again, obviously, and they always found their way through, to the most comfortable chair in the house. Booting up the machine, her Grid workspace appeared, followed by the sound of its internal processor whirring to life. She picked up the tom from the seat, and sat back down, keeping the cat on her lap. Major Zero didn't protest; in fact, he flopped over her knees, stretching, a fair purr vibrating her legs.

Reactivating her harcontacts, Dr Ritsuko Akagi resumed work. The Unit 00 start-up test was this Wednesday, after all, and she wasn't going to get work done by having meals in restaurants.

* * *

~'/|\'~


	10. Chapter 9: Rei 01, Something Black

_A's N's - This was originally posted as part of Chapter 8. The two were split into more manageable chunks, Chapters 8 and 9, after discussions with my beta._

* * *

**Chapter 9**

**Rei 01, Something Black / The other upon Saturn's bended neck she laid**

**EVANGELION**

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

_"Trust no friend without faults, and love a maiden, but no angel." _

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**27th September, 2091**

Without exception, everyone who passed the entrance examination to get into an Ashcroft Academy was a high achiever. The schools prided themselves on it; there was a reason that the global academic league tables were utterly dominated by these schools. They cherrypicked the brightest from mainstream education with generous scholarships, and were rumoured to conduct pre-admission genetic screening which was then taken into account in the acceptance process. The children there were disproportionately xenomixed and genofixed.

And despite this academic brilliance concentrated in one place, not one person had been able to deduce the logic behind how the Physical Education sessions migrated around the week. This week, they were Monday afternoon. Last week, they had been Tuesday morning. The week before that, Thursday morning. The general consensus was that the timetabling LAI was mad, with a minority report that the PE teachers were all a bunch of bloody-minded sadists who took too much pleasure in detentions issued for lack of the proper kit.

Up and down the pitches in front of the main buildings, a mass of boys thundered. Tight white T-shirts were covered by red or blue bibs, as they fought for primacy, and short shorts were splattered with mud as the studded boots tore up the natural turf. With a flick, a blue-bibbed player passed it to a tall, brown-haired boy who, pale legs flashing in the lightstrips in the dome ceiling, tore off up the field, outpacing or outwitting those reds who might have tried to obstruct him.

"Damn it, Dathan, pass the ball!" a boy, in a perfect position for a cross into the penalty box, yelled.

The taller boy ignored them, and, with a flick, sent it straight at the goal with a quite scary velocity, to barely be brushed aside by the fingers of the goalkeeper; fingers which were now in considerable pain. In the chaos around the goalmouth, the ball went out of play, and, luckily for the red-bibbed players, it was their goal kick.

Of course, the people on the pitch were predominantly the first team players from the six classes with PE scheduled at this time. The rest were sitting around at the sidelines, where they were _meant_ to doing exercises. However, the teacher who had been covering them was currently escorting two boys, who'd managed to run head-first into each other, to the nurse's office, and so they were currently being simultaneously apathetic, indolent, salacious and libidinous.

Whoever had decided to give the school swimming pool a glass front which was visible from the playing fields was worshiped as a minor god by much of the male population of the school, or at least the ones old enough, and inclined to find girls interesting. For one, they had single-handedly, in their pursuit of architectural aesthetics, managed to negate the work done in dividing the sexes when there was swimming, to avoid any possible problems with body issues imposed by social pressures.

With a synchronised splash, the five girls standing at the end of the pool dived in. At the other end, the previous set climbed out, dripping down onto the clean white tiles. One wrapped her arm around another, mouth moving in unheard laughter, and there were sighs from the male onlookers.

"I like the view," Kensuke said, in a voice which was approaching sexual harassment merely in intonation, as he nudged Shinji in the ribs.

"I-I don't know what you mean."

"You cannot fool me!" declared Kensuke, with deliberate pomposity. "You, too, are looking for an answer to that eternal..."

"... well, since the 2060s..." Toja interjected, sitting on the other side of the boy.

"... eternal since the 2060s problem too, my friend. It has puzzled generations of men, driven them to madness... and stuff. But what is that problem, I hear you ask?"

Shinji squinted. "I feel you're going to tell me."

"Nazzadi or human! Which is hotter!"

"It's a hard one," a Nazzadi boy, his hair dyed white, said, as he leant back. "And if you say, 'That's what she said', Ken, I will thump you."

"Come on, Ala. Would I do..."

"Yes. And have."

Shinji nodded. "It is true."

"I hate you guys."

"Don't worry," Enitan, the dark-skinned boy on the other side of Toja, said with a smirk. "We hate you too. But, back to the topic at hand," he stroked his chin. "Difficult indeed. Humans are shorter, which is cuter..."

Toja snorted. "You only say that 'cause you're short and don't want a girlfriend who's taller than you. You know how much I'd have to bend down to kiss some of those people?" He paused. "Not that I'd mind, if they were hot, because that's a sacrifice worth making, but still..."

"Ah, but we're forgetting the big divide," Ala pointed out. "More fat; yes or no? Nazzadi are thinner, but humans have bigger boobs, and are more curvy... which I just find..." he shook his head. "Well, look at Panary." Gazes were indeed directed at the girl, her wet black hair tied back into a ponytail, as she stood at the end of the pool, waiting for her signal. "Sure, she might be tall and thin, but look! I mean, if I wanted someone tall, thin, muscled, and with no boobs, I'd go ask Dathan out."

Enitan snorted. "Get ready to fight both Jony and Ferdina for him, then."

"That wasn't _serioooous_."

"Even if he asked you out?"

"Yes! God, were you not listening to me? She's gotta actually," he made gestures in front of his chest, "be shaped like a girl, you know? That was the whole point of the comparison. Plus, you know, I'm a _nazzada_. So I know what my teeth are like. Like chisels, that's what. And... well, that's a _real_ downside on a girl."

There was collective male wincing from all but Shinji, who had tuned out the conversation a while ago. He couldn't help but feel that the whole conversation was more than a little sordid. It was already a little dubious to stare; did they have to make commentary too? It made the whole thing rather uncomfortable. They really didn't spend enough time around women... no, that didn't make sense. It wasn't as if all the other lessons were gender-segregated.

Shinji was of the rather smug opinion (which he would, of course, never mention to anyone) that he just had a healthier, which was to say, less objectifying, attitude to the fairer sex. Because when one is raised by two women, one of whom works for the FSB, one discovers that objectification is not strictly viable, unless one wants to have why it is wrong explained in detail.

Of course, that didn't stop him staring over at the pool, too. Over at the pale figure, dark blue swimming costume a stark contrast to her chalk-coloured skin, who sat at the end of the pool, legs clutched up against her chest.

Rei Ayanami. Who was she, really? He didn't know. Oh, they called the First Child, and sometimes, when they were talking to military people they referred to her as Invidia, but he didn't know anything about her. He didn't know where she lived, what she did in her free time, how she felt about having to pilot, what she was like as a person... in a purely professional sense, he hastened to reassure himself. Although, of course, she was very attractive, in a sort of special way; there was something about the way that snow-white skin just looked _good_ on a girl, and from this viewpoint, he could see that she had an excellent figure. The thought had occurred that he would get to see her in a plug suit at some point in the very near future. It was a nice thought.

But of course, that wasn't why he was interested in her. Honestly. This was a more professional (and the word felt strange to him) interest. Sure, it was possible that something more might be achievable, but that was only a distant prospect. This was just getting to know someone who, after all, also piloted a forty-metre giant robot; someone else who would understand the stress and the punishing training schedule they inflicted on him. He was... he was taking the initiative.

There were things, though, that he had picked up from the others in the class; they said she was asocial, cold, that she never chose to interact with people unless it was necessary and that she had been like this ever since she joined the class, back in first year. Some of the girls had apparently tried multiple times to get her more involved; he had heard mention of attempts by Hikary, Taly, that brown-haired bookish one who sat at the back... no success. Although it was admirable of them to try. She did look... isolated, sitting there, her legs raised up like a barrier to the world around her. Lonely, and yet there was something about her that left him ill at ease, a darker voice added. Maybe it was because she seemed to be able to make his father smile, when he couldn't.

He really hoped it wasn't some kind of unconscious bias against _sidoci_. He didn't want to think of himself as the sort of person who had a problem with them.

Someone said his name. He switched his attention back to the conversation.

"Huh?"

There were mutual smirks all around. "I said," Toja said, "I think Shinji agrees that xenomixed is best."

He stared at them in confusion.

"You were staring," the boy said.

"At _Rei Ayanami_," Kensuke added, unnecessarily.

"N-n-no," Shinji stammered.

Enitan rolled his eyes. "We're not blind, you know. The world doesn't shut down when you're not paying attention." He paused. "Well, if it does, it creates memories that make it the same as if it didn't..."

"But what part were you staring at, hmm?" Toja interrupted, as he leant in. "Her breasts, perhaps?"

"I think you can definitely say she takes after her human side, if you know what I mean," Kensuke said, waggling his eyebrows. "Or maybe her calves?"

"Or her thighs?"

"Like I said," Shinji stammered, pushed off balance by both the interrogation, and the fact that they were leaning in from both sides, "that's not it. Really."

"... in that case," someone muttered, "we should take away your man card. Because not staring at something like that..."

"Then what were you looking at, huh?" Toja said, drawing even closer.

"After all, we know you're bad at lying," the bespectacled boy added

"Your faces are too close," muttered Shinji, through clenched teeth. "And... I was wondering why she's always alone. Why she never does anything with anyone."

"Because she's... like that."

"All _sidoci_ are a bit like that. You can't really get in their heads."

"Always been like that."

"Kinda creepy."

"Don't know why some of the girls keep on trying to get her to do stuff. She's made it clear she's not interested."

"She's _Rei_. That means she... she acts like Rei."

The chorus of advice and answers was as useless as everything else had been.

"Plus, you know, by the way?" Toja nodded, face serious. "The whole 'Why are you so lonely', and wanting to be the one who does stuff with her? Doesn't work. At all."

"Which is a shame," Kensuke added, "'cause she's a solid AA+ on my list of girls."

"Well, yeah, you know there's a study, right," Enitan said, "and... I read it, and it turns out, that xenomixes all have that sex factor... don't look at me like that, that's what they called it, and the study found that, whether they're _amlati_ or _sidoci_, they're like ten percent hotter than other people."

"Yeah, because anything which uses the word 'sex factor' is _totally_ a reliable study," Ala said, rolling his eyes. "Mind you," he said, eyes searching for a certain _amlaty_, and not finding her, "it's true. They do just get the balance right, you know."

Shinji tuned out again, only for the teacher to get back and start shouting that they should be on their feet, that this was 'physical education', not 'sitting around education', and other such witticisms beloved of the PE teacher. Who was wearing a lab coat, for some reason.

The boy blinked. _Oh yeah,_ he thought, as he pulled himself to his feet. _We were sitting around because he had to take people to the nurse's office._ Shinji had sort of forgotten that.

He also had a feeling he was forgetting something else. Oh well. It probably wasn't that important.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"The time is 18:04. Shinji has mail. There is one new voice message from Dr Ritsuko Akagi. Begin voice message. 'Shinji, did you remember to give Rei her card? It's important. If you have already, thanks.' End message. There is an attached file. Do you wish to add this to your reminders?"

Shinji groaned. That was it. Flicking through the attachment, he noted that, yes, Dr Akagi had sent him the girl's address. He looked up at the wall, looking for a clock which wasn't there; a pointless endeavour, since he did already know the time. Idly, he highlighted the physical address.

"Ari," he instructed the muse, "get directions."

The instructions flowed up onto the screen. Shinji frowned. She lived pretty high up, in one of the shallow domes feeding off from one of the older clusters. Maybe forty-five minutes in rush hour, as the estimate stated. He didn't really want to do this.

But he probably had to. He had been asked, yesterday, and Rei would probably have problems without a valid card. And... well, he had wondered where she lived. This was an excuse, right? Well, not an excuse, it was a duty. In fact, he was helping her out by sacrificing his time, which made it acceptable.

Confirmed in his self-righteousness, which was still failing to drown out his nerves, Shinji headed off. Then he stepped back in, and left a note for Misato on the table, telling her where he had gone. And then decided that she'd probably knock it off when she dumped stuff on the table, or just not see it, and sent an email as well. Then he left, only to return to grab something to eat on the way; it wasn't as if there was a paucity of junk food in the apartment. Places where she lived seemed to generate it in the same way that dishes left in the sink generated mould. In fact, there were some dishes in the sink, left to soak from the abortive cooking attempt the night before. Maybe if he just cleaned them first...

No. He wasn't delaying, but he should just go and do it.

If only he could convince himself that the squirming in his stomach was a completely irrational response to an errand which would take him to a pretty girl's house.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

In retrospect, Shinji felt, as he stared around the dome, he probably should have started to get, if not suspicious, a little wary when the warning signs started to pop up, his muse alerting him that the entire dome was private property and that he would not be admitted unless he had a valid reason. Still, that had been within the bounds of possibility. The Geocity had similar warnings, although he hadn't suspected them from a place like this, so high up. Likewise, if it was like that, then it would make sense that there wouldn't be much traffic heading in from the larger domes in the cluster. Even the enhanced security at the dome access point was logical; it made sense that the place would be protected, if it was a private dome, although he hadn't expected to see quite so many powered armours, or the slight nooks in the wall which, by his reckoning, concealed turrets. Still, he had passed the brain scans, the blood checks, and the phone-call down to the Geocity to check that he had a legitimate reason to be here, and he was into the dome where Rei Ayanami lived.

But it was so _quiet_ in here. The only noise was the faint buzz of power cables, and the near silent movement of air from the life support units. Above, the top of the dome was sky-blue, the light strips imperfectly imitating natural sunlight, despite the fact that, outside, it was probably already notably evening. Shinji didn't really know; he had never lived outside the regular twelve hour day-night cycle of an underground arcology, had not ever even been a surface resident, or one of the inhabitants of the very shallow domes, lit by transmitted sunlight from the surface. The place seemed hollow, empty, even more so than the Geocity, which was at least alive in its vastness. This dome was not; stark white buildings forming a circular canyon around the edges, looking down onto the smaller buildings in the centre, and the recreational area. If one could call this a recreational area, Shinji thought. It was maybe ten metres by ten metres, a small square of grass, with a single tree planted (or, from the looks of it, transplanted, given its age) in the centre.

Someone had hung a swing on the tree; a crude construct of two lengths of rope, and a plastic pseudowood plank. The brown-haired boy gave the swing a push, and watched as the pendular motion exhausted itself. He shivered, a motion which flowed into a retrieval of his PCPU from his pocket, to check the address on the map he had generated.

Where was everyone? He almost snorted, at the realisation of another horror film cliché. Where were the cats, too? If films taught you anything, it's that when the cats, colonies of which were kept in every dome for their innate sensitivity to extra-normal entities as well as for more mundane, anti-pest issues, disappeared, something odd was happening. Maybe this whole thing was a trap, maybe it hadn't been Dr Akagi at the dinner, but instead some sinister, evil shapeshifter, which stole the forms of its victims, and was merely luring him here to consume him too...

Shinji shook his head. He was being silly. Obviously, this was an Ashcroft owned-dome, which they leased out to younger employees, who'd still be at work at this time. He was being silly, and letting his imagination creep him out. He should be rational about this.

The problem was that his imagination was both very productive, and somewhat disobedient. And his rationality would have been pleased if it could have just seen someone else. Just for reassurance. No, he was being silly. This was just nerves from going around to an unfamiliar girl's apartment. So what if it was quiet? That was a good thing in a residential dome, especially considering how lively the areas he had been through to get here had been. It was the change which was putting him off, not anything rational.

Rei's apartment was one of the ones on the outer loop, the vertical wall of buildings that encircled the inner space, and which the access tunnel had led through. Naturally, things being as they were, she lived on the opposite side to the one which he had taken. Stepping up to the entrance to her block, the door sliding open as it detected the visitor ID they had given him at the checkpoint, Shinji glanced at the occupancy list, just to check that he was really at the right place.

Yes, there it was. 'Flat 402: Ayanami, Rei'.

And that was it. All the other name spaces, blank. There were ten or so flats per floor on the list; the last one listed was 609. And of that, the only one occupied was 402.

Fortunately, the inside of the apartment building was clean, well lit, and in good condition. It was just as well. Shinji was beginning to get jumpy, and, to name a completely arbitrary example, if there had been a mysterious leaking stain on the ceiling, just above the entrance, he would probably have decided that enough was enough, and just given Rei the card tomorrow at school. Still, despite that, as he got into the lift, his finger hovered over the '400' button for a few seconds, before he pressed it. And, it had to be said, the slight flicker in the light in the lift really did _not_ help matters. Still, he arrived at his destination entirely safe.

"401... 403... huh?" Shinji was getting a little disturbed by now. There didn't actually appear to be a room 402. This was... oh, wait. Yes, there it was. All the odd numbers ran along one side, all the even along another. That... that made a lot more sense. A short burst of nervous laughter escaped his lips, and echoed along the white-painted corridor. He really had to get his imagination under control. Stepping forwards, he swallowed, and knocked on the door.

"Hello?" he called out. _Maybe there was a hidden microphone or something, because I can't see a panel next to the door._

The door swung inwards silently. Through the gap, he could see a stark white hallway, a door at the other end, which suddenly seemed a lot longer than it... Shinji put one hand to his forehead, suddenly feeling lightheaded. He shook his head, eyes screwed shut, and looked up again, leaning into the door, which opened fully, a slight 'clunk' marking when the handle hit the wall. No, it was just a hallway. His stomach growled; most days, he would have eaten by now. It would probably make sense to grab something on the way back, he thought, before looking closer at the scene before him. There was a pair of shoes sitting just inside the door, next to an empty bin, and a pair of socks. That was somewhat reassuring.

"Hello? Rei? It's... um, it's me. Shinji Ikari." He blinked, heavily. "The Third Child," he ventured, in case she didn't remember the name. She might not. It wasn't as if they'd talked.

No response. Well, in that case he should probably find somewhere to leave it for her, and then leave. Should he shut the door properly behind him? She might be around at someone else's house, and forgotten her key, but on the other hand, it wasn't safe to leave the door open. Slipping off his shoes, he stepped inside, walking on tiptoes. He was just going to find a place to leave the card, and... well, maybe he was a little curious.

To his left, he poked his head into what turned out to be the kitchen. It was approaching Misatoan levels of untidiness. What it lacked in empty cans of beer, it made up for in discarded pizza boxes and food wrappings. Shinji frowned, the cook in him subtly disappointed that she appeared to live off fast-food and nanofactory meals, rather than actually cooking. It wasn't that hard, despite the fact that everybody else seemed to find it too much effort. And this wasn't a place to leave the card, certainly, not with all the junk around. He stepped back into the hallway, and pushed the door to the main room open.

His first thought was _What's with the colour scheme?_

His second thought was _Yuck, it's messy in here. Are those... bloodstained bandages? And blood on the pillow, too?_

His third thought was largely incoherent, because he realised that three of the four walls were not painted with a sort of black pattern. They were painted white, just like the fourth wall, to his left, which looked fresh. No, the patterning was writing.

It wasn't scrawled, scribbled writing. No, it was the precise and methodical writing of someone who had taken a great deal of care over what they did. He couldn't recognise all of the characters; there were the phonetic and phonemic symbols of Reformed English, though even then the words were not all familiar, there were kanji, hiragana and katakana, and there were sections in what looked like Greek; at the very least, he recognised the symbols from science lessons.

Uneasily, he was pretty sure that some of it was like the sorcery-related stuff in his father's office. Those bits were typically labelling the diagrams and sketches, interruptions in the flow where turbulence rained, and characters wrapped and swirled around the new shapes, warped from their neat lines.

With a sick fascination, Shinji leant in. It really was very pretty, in an aesthetic sense, each linguistic transition seemingly chosen for some sense of elegance. He traced his finger along one line; the writing felt smooth, and slightly oily on the white paint. Some kind of pen, he suspected; a suspicion which was confirmed as his fingertip smudged the elegance. Hastily he withdrew it, leaving a grey streak on the sharply delineated divide.

_Watching the sun rise_ he read, _the Queen of Μάτια and the Blinded Prince wait for us at the end of everything._ There was then an section he couldn't understand, in an alphabet he couldn't even recognise, before it resumed in kanji. _It has always been an inevitability that unity and oblivion will conflict, for they are the same thing, and they are both born of the soul. Our ties_ and it switched back to RE, _connect us all to one another. Our ties make us σκλάβοι and that is how it must be, for who would chose to be wild and free, beyond καλό και το κακό? It is the final decision we all must take. If we chose to be so, we cease to be us._

Shinji shivered, and with an act of will, looked away. Three of the four walls were like that. The last was freshly white. No, no it wasn't, he realised. There were the first creeping signs of a new diagram snaking around onto the blank canvas, over by the bed.

The bed. Yes. The bed. Stop looking at the walls. Compared to them, the rest of the room was as messy as the kitchen. There were bloodstains on the bed, and the covers were yellowed. And these defects were made worse by how bare, and how bright the rest of the room was. If it had been ill-lit, these sins could have been concealed. Shinji sniffed. And there was a scent to the air, a scent of metal and blood and... something else.

The room stunk of LCL.

Gritting his teeth, that familiar smell rolling off his nostrils and onto his tongue, he stepped further into the room, walking on tiptoes. He swallowed his mouthful of saliva, which tasted as everything did, of LCL, and looked around for somewhere to leave the card. There. There was a chest of drawers over by the bed, which seemed to have a few personal possessions on it. That would be a good place. And then he could get out of here.

He reached into his bag, and took out the card, still sealed in the protective, anti-tamper wrapping that Dr Akagi had given it to him in, and, hand hovering, looked for the most obvious place. There were books, actual, physical books, not readers, stacked neatly. The dust-jackets were dull, pictureless; the font on the spines was that sharp golden writing that Shinji had always thought of as an academic typeface. There was a medicinal box with a scrapelock on it, merely labelled MEDICATION TYPE-4A. Peering through the transparent front, he could see layer after layer of syringe. Some of them had been used; he could tell from the red safety cap covering the tip, compared to the unused whites.

That was a good place, he decided, before frowning. He should probably leave a note, too, to explain it showing up. It would be rather odd for it to suddenly just appear. Leaning on the surface, he took a piece of paper from his bag, and wrote;

_Rei,_

_I was told by Dr Akagi to bring you this. It's a new Ashcroft Ident card; she said your old one had expired. I did knock, and call, but you didn't answer, and the door was open. You might want to keep it closed._

_I'm sorry if this is rude._

He paused, then continued, rather than signing it off immediately.

_Good luck on the upcoming Synchronisation Test. I hope it goes well, and look forwards to training with you_

_Shinji Ikari_

He reread the note. Yes, the 'I'm sorry if this is rude bit' was certainly in the wrong place. It looked like he was apologising for wishing her luck. He amended it to read, 'I'm sorry if this is rude. to let myself in like this,' and then put his pen back in his bag, which left the final thing on the chest of drawers. A pair of deactivated arglasses rested on their side. One of the sides hung uselessly, the hinge obviously broken; a weakpoint, compared to the composite-diamond display.

"Are these Ayanami's?" Shinji said to himself, staring at his own brightly lit reflection in the surface. He couldn't really see her wearing a model like this; something small and oval-shaped, maybe, or one of the circular full-eye ones, but not this older, and expensive model, which looked exactly like a pair of corrective lenses.

Actually, they looked like a very good quality model. They'd certainly still work, despite the broken frame...

Shinji fought with temptation for a moment, and lost.

The arglasses, despite the broken hinge, still fit as well as they would have normally, which was to say that they were perhaps a size or two too large. Reaching up, he felt around the frame until he found the activation button, and they turned opaque, the lens whiting out, the three rotated triangles of the Ashcroft Foundation showing exactly who had made them, and programmed their OS. Blinking, he noted the small black test in the bottom right of both lens.

**Property of Gendo Ikari. Invalid Retina.**

Frowning, he turned around, noting that the lenses had whited out again. What was Rei Ayanami doing with a pair of his father's arglasses?

Oh, wait, no. They weren't opaque anymore; he could see the way they highlighted objects in the room in red and green. No, the white opacity directly in front of him, almost toe to toe, was a dripping wet, naked Rei Ayanami, a white towel draped over her shoulders. She was staring at him

The next few seconds were... confused.

There was certainly a bit when Rei reached out and tried to take the glasses back.

There was certainly a bit when Shinji instinctively recoiled, and screamed in a manner not dissimilar to a little girl, before bouncing off the furniture and straight back into Rei.

There was most certainly a bit where her knee ended up going into his crotch as they fell together. Because that bit hurt.

But no matter what happened, it ended with the drenched Rei on her back on the ground, her hair spread around her like a bridal veil, Shinji leaning on top of her, one hand on something rather warm and one on the cold floor, and one pair of blue eyes locked on one grey pair.

The two stared at each other, unmoving.

Shinji mental processes were largely incoherent with terror at this point, because he'd _just been caught in someone's house and they're her glasses andohGodshe's __**naked**_ _and I'montopof __**her**__..._ Oh, and he was in pain, which was not helping with matters,

Motion still failed to occur.

"Why are you not moving?" Rei asked, her tone no different than she might use if someone were blocking her way at school.

With a yelp, Shinji recoiled up, as he realised that the wet warmness beneath his left hand was her breast. His motion carried him back into the wall, both hands raised in an instinctive protective gesture. What had just happened? What did he think he had been doing? Oh, why hadn't he moved earlier?

Rei lay there, arms still spread, her only movement to tilt her head towards him. With a horribly guilty feeling, the boy could see the pink creep over her right breast, in a rough hand-shape; paler than it would be in a human, because her skin was actually pigmented white, but still there. And still those black pupils stared at him, the only real contrast on a body of whites and greys, with only hints of pink around her eyes, lips, and... down below.

"Do not smudge the wall," she said. With a second yelp, Shinji sprung away from the wall, the black markings on the back of his white shirt and the smudges on the wall proof that the instruction had come too late, only to knock back into the chest of drawers.

With a series of thuds, the pile of books and the box of syringes cascaded off, onto the bare floor.

"Sorry!" gasped Shinji through clenched teeth, face screwed up into a mask of contrition. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry sorry sorry," he sucked in a breath, "really really sorry."

Slowly, her unclad state apparently unimportant to her, Rei pulled herself to her feet. Stepping up to Shinji, still trailing water in a path he could now see led back through another door in the room, she bent over, to pick up the sealed medical box, and place it back on the chest of drawers. Next to it, she placed the arglasses, fingers reaching around the edge to turn them back off.

"Pick up the books," she instructed him. "My hands are wet."

Shinji nodded frantically, realised that the act of looking down might be misinterpreted, and tried to find a safe place in the room to look. This was remarkably hard. Eventually, he settled his gaze on the white wall, over by the head of the bed. "Okay, right away," he babbled. "I'm really sorry, by the way. Sorry. Um. Sorry."

The girl ignored him, as, out of the corner of his eye, he saw her bend down again, to pick up the towel _phew_, and wrap it around her hair, which hung down to her shoulders when wet, suddenly a lot longer, and making her look peculiarly un-Rei like to him.

The boy crouched, and started picking up the books; thick, heavy tomes. _German Poetry 1910-1925, Volume II_, he read. _The Pnakotic Manuscripts: Vol. IV. The Pnakotic Manuscripts: Vol. V. __Die Verborgenen Geheimnisse: Die Grundlagen der arkanen Technologie__._ Shinji frowned. He only knew a little bit of German, a necessity when living with a sorceress, because the Lorenzian School made use of it, and so he had been expected to know enough to know what not to touch, but he was pretty sure that this was one of the foundational books of modern arcane physics. Straightening out its dust jacket, he glanced at the pages it had landed open at.

There was a diagram taking up one page, with that certain quality which suggested it had originally been hand-drawn. It was... odd; he squinted, trying to understand exactly what he was looking at. It looked vaguely like a mesh of cogs, but some of the cogs were sharing teeth with other cogs, intermeshing and yet discrete and unconnected, depending on how he looked at it. The mass of text on the other page, printed in a very small font... well, he could maybe understand one word in every ten. He suspected that even if it had been in English, Japanese or Nazzadi, he wouldn't have got much more than one in three.

And then there were the annotations. In the same hand as the writing on the walls. Some entire sections had been crossed out in red, and replacement text crammed into the margins.

Shinji didn't dare look any further, because this looked like something extra-normal related, or at the very least sorcerous, and when living with a sorceress, he had had it drummed into his head that _you do not read books lying around which look like that_. Instead, he put it back on the pile, and glanced over to see a Rei Ayanami, now, mercifully, at least in a bra and wearing underwear, staring at him, hair still wrapped up in the towel. It would probably have helped more if the undergarments hadn't been white, skin-coloured for her, and she hadn't still been wet, which was already inducing translucency.

"What is it?" she asked.

Shinji stared over at the safe wall again. "Um... uh." He swallowed, tasting the scent of the LCL in the air. "I... uh, that is, yesterday Dr Akagi asked me... that is, told me... um, asked me to give you this new Ident Card but I forgot at school. So I came around. And..." he trailed off.

Rei moved in front of his safe line of vision, to sit down on the bed. He shifted his gaze to the floor, noting the trails of wet footprints that crisscrossed the room. That, and the large damp patch where she had fallen. He could feel the dampness... the warm dampness on his clothing.

"I had an examination with Dr Akagi yesterday," Rei said, from somewhere outside his line of vision. "Why did she not give it to me then?"

"I-I-I guess she forgot," Shinji hazarded.

"Forgot?" Rei asked, her tone dead.

"Probably." Shinji swallowed. "And then... um, I knocked, and the door was open, and I called but you didn't answer so I came in and I thought you might be out or having dinner with neighbours and I left you a note and it was with the card which I put on top of the white box thing," he sucked in a much-needed breath, "um... and I'm sorry." He swept his eyes onto the floor around his feet. Where was it? It had been there, and then the box had fallen off... had been knocked off.

"I have no neighbours." She paused. "I was in the bath," she said, the words somehow utterly disconnected from the previous sentence.

"Oh... um." Yes, that made sense. He'd have heard a shower, after all, but... yes, head under water, it made sense. Oh, there it was. He stooped down, and picked up the card, still sealed in its packaging, and the slightly damp note. Then, eyes squinting, biting his lip, he walked over to Rei, staring at the towel wrapped around her hair, which seemed the safest place, and thrust both in front of him. "So here they are!" he said, in a voice which seemed far too loud in this quiet place.

Silently, Rei took them from him, and then stood up, stepping around him, to put them back on the chest of drawers, on top of the pile of books.

"So...I'll be off then," he added, rapidly. "Silently... I mean, I'm sorry for everything."

There was the sound of a lid being removed from a pen. "Why?" Rei asked.

"I didn't ask before I came in. I should have... just put it through the door or something," Shinji said, backing away towards the door, arms briefly pinwheeling as he almost slipped on a discarded shirt, leaving a footprint in the middle of it. "And... um, I just... never mind."

There was no response. The pale girl was hunched up against the wall, black pen in hand, correcting the damage done to the markings on the wall by his clumsiness. Slowly, the towel slithered down off her head, letting her damp hair hang loose over her face. She didn't seem to care.

"Sorry again," Shinji said, by means of farewell, as he closed the door slowly. His steps out of the flat were careful, measured.

Then he slumped down against the wall in the corridor, fist in mouth, and started whimpering, as all the suppressed nervous tension unleashed itself.

_What the hell just happened?_

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The process of rationalisation had already begun by the time that Shinji got home.

_Well... she might have the Nazzadi attitude to nudity_, he thought. _Yeah, that makes sense. I'm just being insensitive by objecting to it. I should try to be more open-minded. And I was distracted and didn't hear her... no wonder I freaked out, just a little bit_ well, more than a little bit, he had to admit, _when I saw her behind me like that._

_Now... how to deal with the writing on the walls and the fact that she's reading arcane texts?_

It was fighting an uphill battle.

Misato was seated at the table, still in her uniform, poring over printed out documents and dataslates alike. Her Eyes were twitching at unseen images, scanning from left to right. An empty plate, the remains of one of the meals that Shinji had prepared and left in the fridge, was on her left, a pair of grease-covered chopsticks resting on top.

With a small noise, the Major made a few small notes in the margin of one dataslate, and then returned to work, her eyes flicking across nothingness. She blinked once, and then her eyes focussed on the boy in front of her. She seemed tired as she rubbed her eyes.

"Heya, Shinji," Misato said, with a weak smile. "I got the note, by the way, and the email."

"Good."

"Did you give her the card?"

Shinji swallowed, and nodded. "Uh huh."

Misato grinned wider. "You know, it was pretty silly of you to forget to do it at school, huh? Guess you wanted to have an excuse to go around to her house _early_?"

The boy shook his head mutely. Misato began to respond, but then focussed, properly focussed on his expression.

"What's wrong?" she asked, more gently.

"Did you know she reads arcane books?" he blurted out.

Misato frowned, looking for one of the documents in front of her. "Yes... here it is... yes. It's been tagged to her file; she's been allowed access to the censored versions of... well, there's a long list here." She glanced back up at Shinji, her face warm. "It probably was quite disturbing to find it out that way."

"And that she writes on the walls?" The boy's tone was almost pleading, although he didn't know which way he preferred it. That they did not know about it, and Rei was secretly disturbed, or they _did_, and they had deemed it acceptable.

Misato nodded once, her face stony. "I've seen the pictures. That... that must have been a shock. If it helps, the psychiatrists say that it's harmless, and she's never shown any other harmful tendencies, violent or otherwise. And, of course... I was a little disturbed when I first saw the pictures, but Ritsuko pointed out that she can't, physically, do sorcery. She's a White. They're parapsychics so they _can't_ be sorcerers. It's safe." Standing up, she put one arm around Shinji's shoulders, slightly awkwardly. "We probably should have thought it through better, or at least got you to interact before now, huh?"

"I'm... I'm sorry. It's... I should have given it to her at school," Shinji explained, not moving closer to the one-armed hug, but not recoiling, either.

"We're all flawed, Shinji," Misato said, staring at him. "We all forget stuff." She paused. "And how did you get all the black stuff on your back?" she asked, as glanced around his shoulder.

He looked back. "Oh... um, I backed into a wall, and it was dirty."

"You might want to get changed, then... probably should, anyway. I _think_ the bathroom's free, if you want a shower... I cleaned it up." At Shinji's confused expression, she wrinkled her nose. "Pen-Pen was sick. And you smell of sweat... did you have sports today?"

The boy frowned. "Can birds even be sick?" he asked, ignoring the comment at his personal odour.

"Evidently, this one can," the woman said drily.

And, indeed, the bathroom smelt slightly of sick, and even more of the... concoction that Misato had brewed up yesterday, even when the rest of the apartment had largely been ventilated. Shinji could make some educated reasons for exactly _why_ the albino penguin had been sick, but he was not going to, after the revelations at the meal.

Although it seemed that Pen-Pen was not as smart as some people would have had him believe, if he had willingly consumed that substance; Shinji hesitated to call it food.

Being very careful to lock the door behind him, after ensuring that the room was penguin-less, Shinji stripped off, running the shower to let it warm up as he folded up his trousers, and saw the full state of the shirt. Yes, the white back was completely covered in the smudged black pen markings. If he'd been wearing the coat from the uniform, the markings wouldn't have been noticeable, but he'd have to have been an idiot to wear his uniform like that, out of school hours, up to such a high elevation. Academy students had a certain reputation which worked against them in poorer areas, as a bunch of rich, stuck-up, genofixed children of Ashcroft technocrats. Shinji would like to try to argue that wasn't the case, but as he objectively filled three of the four criteria by any standards, he was not the best representative for their case.

He suddenly realised why Toja must be so insistent at not following the school uniform policy. Hadn't he said that he lived in one of the surface arcologies? It must be unpleasant for him, having to make that commute every day.

Checking the temperature with his hand, he withdrew it instantly, and added more cold to the blend, until it wasn't actively painful. Stepping under the shower, he let the warm water roll down his head, darkening his hair which hung limp over his face, running in rivulets down his shoulders and over the small of his back, the warm _feel of her breast under his hand._

Shinji looked down. "Damn it," he muttered. He shouldn't be turned on by that; he should be disturbed. And yet he had most physical evidence that he was.

_That went horrifically, horribly, inutterably __**wrong**_, was Shinji's foremost conclusion from that little escapade.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**29th September, 2091**

Rei was not at school on Tuesday. Shinji considered this a blessing; it might be better to get the explanations and more apologies out, before things could fester, but he didn't want to confront her at all. If he could never see her again, it would have been perfectly acceptable to him in his current mindset. Neither was she there on Wednesday morning, which was a relief for Shinji, and he spent the classes feeling rather more cheerful than he might otherwise have been. This state of affairs was only aided by Toja's sense of impending doom, and wailed protests of 'What did I do to deserve a bunch of nine-year girls crushing on me?' He and Kensuke did do their best to 'reassure' him by pointing out that he could apply for a different Social Work Programme for the Spring Term, which only bought further groans.

However, such a thing could never last, for the Unit 00 Synchronisation Test was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, when he had to be down in the Geocity. And when Rei Ayanami stepped into his otherwise-empty lift, both of them on their way down to the areas assigned to the Evangelion Group, his luck ran out.

The trip down was filled with awkward silence, the two figures in the black overcoats of the Academy standing at opposite corners of the box. Perhaps foolishly, the boy tried to break the quiet.

"I'm... I'm really sorry for Monday," he said. "I-I-I just want you to know, it was all an accident, especially the... the touching." He blushed bright red, as he realised just how that comment sounded.

She did not turn to look at him. "You have already expressed such sentiments."

"Yes... well, I want you to know that I'm sorry."

"Why are you sorry?"

Shinji screwed up his eyes. "Because it was all my fault... and..." he trailed off.

"Will your sorrow change anything?"

"... no, but..."

"Then why be sorry?"

"Because I'd be a bad person if I didn't!" he snapped, before instinctively recoiling. "Oh... I'm sorry."

"You have already expressed that sentiment. Today."

Shinji fell paused, and tried to change the subject. "I know you're going to be trying the reactivation experiment today," he said.

Rei said nothing, still not making eye contact with him.

"I hope it's successful this time," he added.

The silence at her end of the conversation continued.

"Aren't you... scared of getting into Unit 00 again?" he asked. "I would be. Terrified. I'm scared of Unit 01 as it is, and nothing that bad... as bad as what happened to you, has happened to me in it."

"Why?" The word was soft.

"Excuse me?"

A pause. Then, "Why should I be scared of Unit 00?"

"Because... um... well, I saw how injured you were on that first day. Aren't you scared that it will happen again?"

"No." He saw her eyelashes flicker up and down, as she blinked slowly. "Fear would increase the chance of a synchronicity accident. So I am not scared."

The boy couldn't help but marvel at the self-control shown there. And be a little scared at the fact that she had just said that fear could cause synchronisation accidents, of course. Because if that was true, and considering his first time... Shinji suddenly got the feeling that there was a universe's worth of razor blades just a hair's breadth from his skin, which were just waiting to fall.

With a feeling of deceleration, and a ping, the lift came to a halt, far down in the guts of the Geocity. The area here was one of the vast hallways, the ones which an Evangelion could probably crawl through. Shinji mentally paused. In fact, that was almost certainly their purpose; transporting the things around. Stepping out of the lift, he followed Rei, the sounds of their footsteps utterly lost in the immensity of the space, having to job every few steps to keep up. She walked quickly.

And for once, Rei initiated the conversation.

"You are Representative Ikari's son," she said, her tone not a question.

Shinji nodded. "Yes."

"You must trust your father's work."

The boy blinked heavily. "Why?" he retorted. "He never gives me any reason to trust him! He never cares; only uses me! I certainly won't trust him because he happens to be related to me!"

Rei Ayanami's footsteps ceased, and she turned, no, _flowed_ around, suddenly facing him. "Do not speak about Representative Ikari that way," she said, the corners of her eyes narrowing fractionally.

"Why not? He's _my_ fath..."

The blow was not so much a slap as a full-on punch, her knuckles impacting with the soft tissue of his cheek. Blinking hard, mouth hanging open, Shinji slowly raised his hand to his face. He hadn't even seen her move. And that really hurt. Fall on her when she was naked; no response. Make negative comments about his own, useless, child-soldier-using father, and...

"Mnghui," he managed, to the figure that was already striding off. "Oww. Um... I'm sorry?"

There was no response from the pale girl.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Compared to the first activation test, the air in the control centre was buzzing with nervous tension. Only Gendo Ikari, alone, seemed proof against the concern, his gloved hands folded behind his back.

"Inform me when the Operators are prepared," he ordered Dr Akagi, not looking her way.

"Yes," she nodded. Inwardly, she winced. The Operators... well, they had done their best to reassure the heavily cyberised computer technicians, but, to be honest, they were scared. Two of them had died in the last test; three more were in a vegetative state. Only one of the ones who had not disconnected before the Evangelion had broken through their defence barriers was back on duty, and, for obvious reasons, he was not permitted to assist today. Running one hand down her spine, she shook her head slightly. The Operators all seemed so young to her. Not as young as the girl in the Evangelion, though.

Ritsuko resumed her preparatory work. The conditions for this test were quite unlike the ones which had prevailed last time. While before it may have been merely been secured to the wall, this time it was sunk to its waist in a variant of the dark RCL fluid used in the Evangelion bays. This time, if it tried to break free, it would be treated as Dante's Satan, its legs immobilised in flash-frozen memomorph. Its arms were spread out wide, to minimise the leverage it could gain, but they were under no illusions that it would stop the beast. Not now. No, they would begin with the restraint fluid, and move up to, should it prove insufficient, detonating the shaped charges placed on the Units limbs, to sever key muscles.

The Representative opened a communications channel to the white Evangelion.

"Rei."

A quiet response. "Yes, Representative Ikari."

"We will begin by inserting the LCL. Are you prepared?"

"Yes. There will be no synchronicity accident this time. It is necessary that I successfully synchronise with Unit 00, therefore I will."

"Good." He closed the connection. "Flood the plug," he ordered. "Monitor her mental state at all times, even before the experiment begins. If there are any signs of recurrence, abort immediately."

"Yes sir."

Shinji was standing away from the workfloor, on the raised observer's platform. Beside him, Misato stood, her face pensive, a cup of coffee clutched in her hand. She took a long, slow sip, staring intently at the screen. Although this was being carried out in one of the test chambers, it wasn't being carried out in the same test chamber as the one which the room overlooked. What if the Evangelion had gone for the exposed window, it had been asked? What if it had turned on its surroundings, rather than itself?

The consequences would have been catastrophic.

"We should never think of the Evangelion as just another war machine," Misato said to herself, softly, almost unheard of over the babble. "It's not. I've seen Engels out of control. But last time... this was a wholly different thing." She snorted. "Or maybe an unholy different thing."

Shinji narrowed his eyes at her. "Thanks a lot for your reassurance," he said, his tone bitter. "Given that, you know, we're watching someone who's already lost control once before..." he paused, "... and come to think of it, so have I!"

"No, that's what I mean," Misato said, raising her voice. "The rampant Engels... they acted like Unit 01 did. They attacked things... anything that wasn't from their Species... that's a base-organism, by the way, in the same way that all the Evangelions use the same base. But Unit 00... it hurt itself. It was really trying to get the Entry Plug out."

"Yes, my father really did a wonderful job when he... did whatever he does with them, I'm not quite sure," said Shinji, his rousing condemnation somewhat ruined by the uncertainty at the end. "Why _should_ I trust his work, when I don't even know what they are or what he did?" he added to himself, staring down at the man. A thought struck him.

"What?" asked Misato, who had missed the last part.

"When did my father start wearing gloves?" he asked.

Misato leant against the railing, and took another drink. "The Unit 00 start-up test," she explained. "The Evangelion... it tried to crush its own entry plug. Partially succeeded, too."

"But... the Entry Plug is covered in armour," Shinji protested.

"Yes." The word was said with a dreadful finality.

"You mean..."

"It slammed into the wall until it managed to crack the plating enough to get a finger under it, and then it started ripping its own back apart," Misato said, a distant look in her eyes. "It just managed to expose the plug, and crush the end, when it finally deactivated. And then it fell over backwards, because its knees didn't lock up." She shook her head, staring at the boy. "Your father was the first one down, with the rescue team. He managed to get up onto the Evangelion, crawled out onto the plug and levered it open, around one of the tears. His hands... they got horribly cut up on the edges, and his back too, when he crawled through. And the Evangelion was bleeding too, so the blood got into the wounds, and... well, they managed to save his hands. Or I heard he did, managed to pull out some sorcery to cleanse the wounds." Misato took a sip. "There's a lot of tales about him. I'm sure he has people spread some of them, because I can't believe that they're all true."

"He... did all that?" Shinji asked, feeling slightly numb. "But wasn't that only a few days..."

"Before Asherah showed up, yes. Everything that first day, he was doing it on just enough painkillers to allow him to think clearly."

Shinji leant his chin on his arms, resting on the balcony, and stared again at his father.

The bearded man spoke. "We're going to try reactivating Unit 00," he ordered. "Start the first connection."

"Connect the external power supply."

"Voltage has passed the critical point."

"Understood," reported Penny Epouvantable, the red-haired civilian Operator who was heading up this dive. "Subject has passed Phase II. We're getting a stable EFCS Type-1 Attunement. Animaneural waveform is... stable."

"Start Phase III," ordered Dr Akagi, her stomach a tight little ball of acid and fear.

"Plug is set to level 2. Beginning test sequence."

"LITAN feed is clear... reports from in-Unit correlate with external feeds. Maintaining monitoring."

"The series of pulses and harmonics are normal."

"Feeding external power to non-vital systems. Right arm... left arm... all limbs are powered."

"Releasing limited motor controls. D-Brakes are operating at full capacity."

There was a terrible moment of silence, as everyone's eyes were locked on the bar. Rising, rising, falling, rising, nearing the point of absolute borderline.

With an almost cheerful bleep, the bar passed the given value.

"Stable connection formed!" the message came from the Operators.

There was a pause, a moment of silence.

And then everyone relaxed, as the bar did not retreat.

"Unit 00 has activated."

A window opened from in Unit, to display Rei's face, an even paler heart shape within the cowl. "Activation is successful," she announced. "I am waiting for your permission to begin the interlocking test."

"Roger. Go ahead, Test Pilot Ayanami."

Shaking her head slightly, an adrenaline-smile in her exhausted face, Ritsuko made her way up to the observation balcony.

"Congratulations," the Major said, with a professional nod, and then Misato smiled. "Well, you did it, Rits."

"Well... we'll see, but it looks hopeful. The tests are probably going to go on for..." Ritsuko tapped a button on her PCPU, to bring up the schedule, "... well, let's put it this way, I'm not getting any sleep tonight, and Shinji, you won't be seeing Rei at school tomorrow." The blond sighed. "You can go home... and you too, Misato. It's just, as you'd put it, 'boring technical stuff', and as I'd put it, 'vital test work to ensure that pilot synchronisation is calibrated correctly'."

"I thought you just dumped people in the Eva and hoped for the best," said Shinji, a slightly bitter note in his voice. He couldn't have stopped himself for free access to every IP database on the pla... okay, he could have stopped himself for that. But he couldn't have stopped himself for some very large, but not too large, prize.

Ritsuko did not snap back. It would have been easier had she done so. "It's okay, Shinji," she said, in a quiet, almost dead voice. "We can just delete all your pilot data we spent weeks building up, and let you go in a default, guessed setting every time, because we got lucky with you on the first time. And then you'll be lucky if you only get hurt as badly as Pilot Ayanami did on the activation test on the sixteenth of August. We can do that, if you like."

Shinji winced. "Sorry," he said, already cringing inside. "I didn't think..."

"No," the scientist said. "You didn't. Off you go. Some of us have work to do."

"Lay off him, Rits." Misato's words were calm, controlled, and quiet. "That's not needed."

The scientist blinked. "I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head. "I'm just... I'm just relieved that this didn't go wrong like last time. And still might go wrong." She sighed. "I sometimes forget that you're not like Rei," she explained. "You're not used to it. This. Everything. And you have the right to object."

Shinji nodded silently.

"But... yes, you should both get some rest," she said in a quieter voice. "Someone might as well, and this place is going to be humming with stressed-out scientists, engineers and technicians for the next... God knows how long. Aeon, probably. So... like usual, but even more stress."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**30th September, 2091**

Shinji was shaken awake, by a Misato with a jacket thrown on over her nightclothes. "Shinji, wake up!" she shouted at him, her face deadly serious. "Get out of bed now!"

The boy squinted in the light. "Gah." He shook his head. "What's happening?" he asked, sitting up, as Misato yanked off his covers, dumping an armful of clothes onto his lap. "What time is it?"

"Get up, get dressed. We're needed down in the Geocity now. Emergency call. And it's about half-three in the morning."

With a groan he swung his legs out of bed. "Why?" He blinked, as something struck him. "Did something go wrong with Rei's test?"

Misato shook her tousled hair. "No. But they've found Harbinger-5. Or rather, it's shown up. In Eastern Europe."

Shinji was suddenly wide awake, and fumbling at his top. "Is it... coming this way?" he asked. "And... um, can you look away, please?"

"Yes and yes," Misato said, turning around to leave the room, to get dressed properly herself. "There's security in the living room, and they've put some coffee on. We can drink it in the IFV, right?" she added, a slight lilt in her voice.

Shinji couldn't help but smile slightly. It was a weak, trembling and rather tired expression, true, but a smile nonetheless.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Above, the night sky was filled with stars. They did not twinkle, and they did not shine; they were cold, distant points of light. If there were children's tales told of these stars, they were the kind which were censored and bowdlerised, all to keep from infant minds from the terrible truths of the cosmos. The darkness of the void reached from horizon to horizon with no hint of dawn; terrible, unreachable, anathematical to light, which died in its Stygian majesty.

And the land below was the same. Black, glassy crystal covered every surface, _was_ every surface. The stars below reflected the stars above, distorted and warped them until not one familiar constellation could be seen, and an onlooker could not tell what was up, and what was down.

But, slowly, the eyes adjusted to the darkness, to the lack of contrast, to the dead beauty of this place. And that was when the true horror crept in. Because in among the monoliths of black crystal, resplendent in their five-fold symmetry, the other shapes could be seen. Buildings of opaque black crystal. Trees of black crystal which blossomed into leaves of black crystal. The scattered chess-pieces of the army of the gods, all without White to oppose them. The eye adjusted, and then it did not believe, for to believe that this alien landscape was one which had so recently been just another battlefield in the Aeon War was too much to accept.

And in the precise centre of this darkness, something hung. It was only visible through omission, for it did not reflect, and it did not glisten and gleam and shimmer in the cold light of the stars. Slowly it span, as if observing what it had wrought here. There were ten faces to this being; ten vast conguent kites that interlocked to form one pentagonal trapezohedron.

Slowly it span. All too slowly.

It was here.

It was time.

* * *

~'/|\'~


	11. Chapter 10: Rei 02, In Ice and Dust

**Chapter 10**

**Rei 02, In Ice And Dust / and to the level of his hollow ear, leaning with parted lips**

**EVANGELION**

~'/|\'~

_But if some mind very different from ours were to look upon some property of some curved line as we do on the evenness of a straight line, he would not recognize as such the evenness of a straight line; nor would he arrange the elements of his geometry according to that very different system, and would investigate quite other relationships as I have suggested in my notes._

_We fashion our geometry on the properties of a straight line because that seems to us to be the simplest of all. But really all lines that are continuous and of a uniform nature are just as simple as one another. Another kind of mind which might form an equally clear mental perception of some property of any one of these curves, as we do of the congruence of a straight line, might believe these curves to be the simplest of all, and from that property of these curves build up the elements of a very different geometry, referring all other curves to that one, just as we compare them to a straight line. Indeed, these minds, if they noticed and formed an extremely clear perception of some property of, say, the parabola, would not seek, as our geometers do, to _rectify _the parabola, they would endeavour, if one may coin the expression, to _parabolify _the straight line._

Ruđer Bošković

~'/|\'~

The hands of the rather old, and exceptionally expensive clock ticked their way close to half-past nine, accompanied by the clink of cutlery. The restaurant was rather emptier than might have been expected, though, even for this time on a Thursday. In fact, only one table was filled, right in the centre, under the chandelier.

And even if this hadn't been done for security reasons, the party eating now could have afforded to have booked the entire restaurant, which was one of the most expensive in Chicago-2, the capital of the New Earth Government. And had done so.

It was an annoyance to the reddish-blond girl sitting on one side of the table that the meal was somewhat hindered by the fact that one arm was in a cast.

"... and the most annoying thing about it," Asuka Langely Soryu said, a slight scowl marring her features, "was that I had previously _told_ them that they were over-stressing the right arm." A wry grin twisted her features. "It's only thanks to me that I noticed that, and so wasn't using that arm to the full. Otherwise, it might have actually damaged Unit 02. You know, rather than _merely_ lingering sympathetic pain causing me to slip as I climbed out of the plug." The scowl returned. "And it shouldn't have been an issue, if they'd allowed me to use my _proper_ plug suit."

The man looked puzzled. "I'm sorry... what? Not using a proper plug suit?"

"There's a lighter, thinner one they use for PR and component testing," Asuka explained. "It's an older model. It gives a slightly higher average synch ratio, but it's slippery, and _totally_ unsuitable for real combat. It doesn't even act to absorb an impact." She frowned. "Plus, you feel like you're almost naked in it."

The older man nodded sympathetically, his rust-coloured hair now shot through with hints of grey at the temples. "I see," Dr Calvin Sylveste, head of the Achtzig Group, and formerly of the original Evangelion Project, said. He sighed. "Such sloppiness from your technical team is not easily forgivable."

Asuka rolled her eyes. "Oh, believe me, I don't intend to."

"Good."

Cutlery clinked again, in the silence.

"Still," the man said, "at least it gives them an opportunity to run a full maintenance cycle on the Unit." He smiled, over the top of a still-immaculately trimmed beard. "And you'll just have to spend time with your old Uncle Cal while the medichines knit everything back together."

The girl smiled. "It is an ill wind..." she said. She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Uncle, I've been talking about myself pretty much since I arrived. And..." she glanced at him, "it's not like you don't hear what I've been doing from COEUS, anyway." She shifted slightly, resting her injured arm on her lap, and her chin on her other palm. "You know your work at Achtzig is just as interesting as anything I get up to."

"There's never a need for false modesty, Asuka," the man remarked.

"Yes, I know, but people seem to expect it for some reason."

"Oh, very much." The man took a sip of wine. "We've been doing fascinating work on the animaneural boundary. Specifically what happens if you throw cybernetics, sorcery, and high end AI systems into the mix."

"But of course." Asuka smirked. "It's best if you can get your hobbies into the work."

"Hah! Yes! There's nothing sacred about the mind, body or the soul as they stand."

"'Everything can always be improved; perfection is asymptotic '," the reddish-blond girl replied, quoting something that he had told her many times, both back when he had been looking after her, and later, once she had joined the 'Children' Test Pilot programme, on his frequent visits. As a result, she had known what 'asymptotic' had meant, when she was five.

But then again, she was a prodigy; something that Calvin Sylveste had only encouraged.

"Exactly. We've begun a," he reflexively glanced around, "... well, we've started work on the next generation of TITANs."

"Ah!" Asuka exclaimed, as she sipped at the soup.

"Hot?"

"Well... yes, but that must have been what you were hinting about last time we talked! You _were_ being rather secretive about what you were doing then."

"Exactly! It wasn't sure then, but now I'm certain we've got stable black-box seed-cultures for the AIs. Fourteen of them. If we have similar wastage rates as last time, we should have nine or ten finalised products."

"That's really awesome!"

Calvin looked smug. "It is, isn't it?"

Asuka paused, and, putting on her prettiest smile, began to...

"Asuka, you don't need to do that," the older man said, running his hand through his rust-coloured hair.

Her lips twisted into a miniscule pout, which, to her annoyance, produced a smile on his face, before she continued. "Do what, Uncle?" she asked, innocently.

He fixed her with a level gaze. "Asuka, I've known you all your life. And, not only that, but Kyo... your mother used to do _exactly_ that, too. Present the facts about what you want to me, and then I'll decide. I'm remarkably proof against beautiful smiles."

"Ah, but then, by your own words, you are not immune," the girl said, leaning back slightly, with a much more genuine smile. "Therefore, if I should so happen to want something, surely the rational choice is to do so, as a small benefit is better than none at all."

"True, true. That's the sound first-order result. But we're not dealing with a first order situation, are we?"

"I suppose not."

"You suppose not?" The tone was questioning, testing.

"I'm sure not, then," she said, with unblinking Eyes.

His own ocular implants locked with hers. "Then speak."

"Can you upgrade Gehirn, my LITAN, to full TITAN status, then?

The man raised one hand. "I'd love to," he said, his voice with a tint of remorse. "But I'm no longer involved with Project Evangelion. Achtzig is a separate Group, after all. I don't have the authority to do so, and..." he narrowed his Eyes, "... I severely doubt that Gendo would let me... or Miyakame, if we come down to it, anywhere near an Evangelion."

"Gendo?" Asuka asked. "Oh. Gendo Ikari? The Representative for Europe?"

"Yes. That's the man."

"Why does he have anything to do with it?" the red-haired girl asked. "The Evangelion Group is a Group, and thus isn't directly under the control of any one Representative... and shouldn't it be Research who has more say, too, rather than one of the Regional ones? Now, I can understand how his opposition might make things difficult, but... come on! The Ouranos LITANs are the inspiration for the TITANs. They're practically proto-TITANs. Can't people be less petty about things like that, and just let the best person do things?"

Calvin sighed. "I wish it were that easy. But he was a supervisor, the supervisor... not the first, but the last, for the original Project. He owns Evangelion, whatever the formal delineations of authority are. And he'll say 'No'."

Asuka raised her eyebrows. It was a comparatively rare event that Uncle Cal talked about the original Project. "So he worked with you and my Mama?" she asked.

The man nodded. "Yes. More in an administrative role, but he did some of the important theoretical work on AT-Fields; he's a pure sorcerer, and a very, very good one at that, as good as your mother was, and she was..." he trailed off.

"She was?"

Calvin shook his head, shaken out of his reverie. "... amazing. Better than me, and I'm no slouch." A faint smile crept over his lips. "I can still remember some of their arguments on particularly esoteric bits of theory. Not _understand_ them, but remember them. Both primarily practitioners in the Salaamian school, although I heard Ikari trained as a Horakian."

The girl smiled. She liked hearing these tales from the man, when she could get him to talk about it. It was always fascinating to hear a little bit about what had gone into the technological marvel which she piloted... and hear how amazing her mother had been. Because she just knew that she was going to be able to do all of that someday, live up to the potential her mother had given her. "Did anything... happen between them?" she asked with a wicked smirk on her face.

The older man looked shocked. "Oh, no. God, no. Ikari was married, for one, and you... Asuka, you do know that men and women can be friends... friends slash competitive rivals," he corrected himself, "without wanting to have sex? Right?"

She rolled her eyes. "I was just... never mind. But... from this, you got on, yes? Shouldn't he be willing to accept help? I mean, Unit 02 is the _best_ unit, after all, and so if it had a TITAN..."

He shook his head. "It couldn't last," he said, his tone final. "We... didn't part well. But as for how he's the authority... well, he's the protégé of Asha Rosaiah... she's the Representative for Asia, now; he used to be her Deputy Representative. He's got enough clout to hold it, and," the man gave a bitter laugh, "certainly the intent. And, more generally, people... the world always gets in the way. Whether it's internal politics obstructing pure science, or those _bioconservatives_ and _neuroconservatives_ in the Senate," the words were said with an identical intonation to 'scum', "well..."

"I know what you mean," Asuka said, Eyes narrowed. "They keep on turning my requests for more enhancements, even though I know I can be _even_ better."

A sudden chuckle broke the silence. "Well, we're getting bitter over things we can't help, and I don't know about you, but I've had enough of that for one lifetime."

"I'm still sixteen, as people just _love_ to remind me," the girl pointed out, "and I don't feel _I_ have. In fact, I think it's a teenager's prerogative."

"Yes, well..." the man said, and paused, a look of distant pain in his Eyes, or, more accurately, written in the muscles around them. "I was going to give this to you later," he said, "but... well." He shook his head. "I believe you could do with more cheering up. Consider it a 'get well soon' present, if you must," he added, pulling a small box, made of some dark wood, out from a compartment under the table.

"Really, you don't need..."

"Remember what I said about false modesty."

"... to give it right now, it can wait until after dinner, is what I was going to say," Asuka finished, noting the small smile that the remark produced.

"That's my girl," Calvin Sylveste said. "As a wise man once said, '''Hubris is a coward's word,''' and I think we could all do to listen to him."

"Uncle, that was you. At my seventh birthday party, I think... maybe eighth. Of course, it's true."

"Exactly. And it was the eighth, because it was the last year that..." the man fell silent.

Asuka nodded, her face solemn. "Yes," she said. "It was the eighth."

Just then, her PCPU chimed. "Asuka," a mechanical voice said, only audible over the implants in her ear.

"What is it, Jeff?" she asked.

"Urgent recall, highest priority. You are to report to Captain Martello immediately, for possible deployment," her muse stated.

Asuka blinked, and glanced over at her 'uncle', who had one eye lit up harcontact-style, reading something.

"I'm really sorry," they both said simultaneously, "but... oh."

"Some kind of recall message," Cal asked, one eyebrow raised.

Asuka nodded. "Something like that," she said, cautiously, wary of the security protocols.

The man sighed. "Well, that's this meal ruined," he said, "and we hadn't even got past the starters. I'm needed back at... a place." One eyebrow raised, as he added, "And they're calling you back, even with a sprained wrist."

"And a hairline fracture, too," the girl pointed out. "It's not _just_ a sprained wrist... at least not in the dismissively sense that people too frequently use."

"Oh, certainly." The Director of Science for the Achtzig Group sighed. "I wonder what's going on," he said, standing up to help her.

The clock read half-past nine, on the twenty-ninth of September.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**30th September, 2091**

In the eternal chthonic darkness that the Harbinger bought with it, a constellation was born. Its light reflected off the black glass that covered the landscape for a tiny fraction of a second, before the blast wave hit, and the covering shattered, tiny shards of night dancing like macabre fairies at the front of the wave, spreading far and wide. A second wave of impacts happened, and a third, as from beyond the horizon, tiny bird-spires, which approached bio-organic from the far side, emptied their racks of ordinance, and rolled away to return to reload.

The Fifth Harbinger, Mot, cared not. The blasts of the missiles, specialist anti-armour ones designed to send a needle-thin jet of plasma through the armour of a human tank, bent and warped, as if they were afraid to touch the entity. The spectral fire of its AT-Field was a bitter radiance which crystallised spacetime itself, locking projectiles in mid-air. And from this trapped amber, fragments of black crystal rained down upon the earth, transmuted by the unreality of the will of Mot into something befitting of the world-view it desired.

Already, void-black spires, reflecting the lights of the impacts and the AT-Field of their progenitor, were growing up from the earth from where the discarded crystal pooled; fractal geometries with five-fold symmetry. It was beautiful, elegant. The profane implements of that which would try to harm the Harbinger were sculpted into geometrical perfection.

What higher good was there than that?

Well, certainly, both the Migou and the New Earth Government disagreed with such changes. Violently. From the east came vast ships, hundreds of metres long, outmassing the bombers and fighters which swarmed around them in the same way that a gas-giant outmassed its orbiting moons. The ranges here were nothing by stellar standards, but on the surface of a planet, a hundred kilometres suddenly became a long way, when the atmosphere dispersed lasers, claimed the kinetic energy of missiles, and forced the engines to maximum to maintain the arcanomagnetic containment fields of relativistic charged weapons. Despite that, the ventral plasma cannon on the first fired as soon as it had line of sight, stellar-intensity plasma of a kind which could be used to cut through a battleship hull or layers of arcology armour spewing forth coherently.

And _bounced_ off, the containment field lines warped such that its own constraints meant that it was not permitted near the corpus of its superior.

Retaliation was near instantaneous for that affront.

White light illuminated the vertices of the Harbinger, shining along the edges as if from cracks within, only to pool at the points. The brilliance of the beam lanced out, and a sun was born on the eastern horizon, within the darkness which the thing carried with it. The beam from the Migou ship was snuffed out, without a care, as the ship was torn apart. Fragments of once-hull crystal were carried on the front of the blast wave, scything outwards through the night. Then came another glow, another sun, before the fireball from the last had faded. And another. As soon as any of the Migou ships came into line of sight, there was another newborn sun on the horizon, each one massively outshining the constant rain of fire which descended upon Mot.

To some, it might have appeared that the Harbinger was fleeing the Migou that, like wolves, harried the vast trapezohedron. In truth, the wolves were no more than flies, and that was quite apt as a comparison, for they were an annoyance, but one which did distract the god-thing from its chosen task, and which, given sufficient numbers, could injure and maim it. It was not immune to a death of ten-thousand cuts. The larger ships were hanging back now, shielded by the curvature of the Earth, and they were emptying their missile racks, even deploying the antimatter tactical sterilisation weapons. The beams of white light from Mot's intersections were constant now, the light marring its dark world, but as they cut through the air, the transmuted missiles were rendered harmless.

At these distances, measured in the tens of kilometres, both parties were but tiny specks to each other. The Migou missiles were operating at the edge of their range, their paths forced into predictable lines by lack of the fuel that they would usually use, and the low-flying missile carriers. Simply, the Harbinger outgunned anything the Migou had, and so the fungoid beings were hiding until they could get into a more useful range. Merely by flying at ground height, rather than their normal combat elevation, they could reduce Mot's line of sight considerably, even before the cover of hills was taken into account. Jumping from safe place to safe place, each move planned in unison by the genius minds of a species which had been in space before the synapsids had split from the other amniotes, they moved assets into position to launch perfectly coordinate attacks, each shot designed to account for transit time, gravity and the Coriolis effect of this spinning planet.

Another glowing, radiant wall. Another series of retaliatory strikes.

And then something large slammed into the Harbinger, and the impact birthed its own sun, centred on the blackness, consuming the shape of the god-thing. The starless dome flickered, white, luminescent cracks painted on its surface, just for a second, before it returned, seemingly unchanged.

A second was enough. For that short while, the strange stars and void-like scar which shone in the altered space around the Harbinger had gone, the power that bought them into this world released. A spire of darkness, an absence against the mundane night's sky, had licked up, to puncture the orbit-to-surface kinetic platform and swat the rest of the salvo of high-velocity rods which were already tearing a path through Earth's atmosphere.

And the screaming thunder of an angry god filled the air, tearing trees and knocking lesser missiles out of the way like toys.

Almost unnoticed in the conflict were multiple squadrons of concealed NEG scout drones. The autonomous fliers were almost invisible to anything but a dedicated x-ray frequency scanner, designed to catch back-scatter from metallic objects. They were here on a mission, in pursuit of information on the Migou and the Harbinger alike. But they were only 'almost' unnoticed, because as fire rained down through the darkness, and the bitter radiance of the vengeance of Mot lashed out, one lance swept through the drones, unerringly, yet casually seeking them out, and ending them.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"... and that is when the last feed cuts out," the Marshal said, the worry lines heavy around her Eyes obvious even when she was only an ARvatar. "Now, if we take what data we do have, especially from the OTH radar grids, and track its course-vector..."

The evidence was obvious to the collection of Admirals, Marshals and other senior military figures. The line, curved on a two-dimensional map, took the most direct route of London-2. Just like the previous two Harbingers had.

"That's far from the only problem we have on our hands, however," Field Marshall Jameson said, his cold blue eyes staring at the map. "Look at this. From what we've been able to track of Migou movements..." his words were accompanied by a fine mesh of red arrows, all heading towards the hole in the green line of the NEG defences torn by the dark mass of the Harbinger. "It seems that they're using the damage it did to the Eastern Front to push on through."

"Could it be possible that they summoned it?" asked another floating head. "The way it's breaking the lines, their own movements to follow it..."

"The analysts are looking at it."

Misato ground her teeth as covertly as she could, as her eyes flicked from one high ranking officer, all with 'Marshal' somewhere in their rank, to the next. Of course, not everyone was a much, much more higher-ranking officer than her lowly status as a Major. There was the senior figure from the GIA. And a civilian advisor from one of the NEG-run occult research institutes. And the _Minister of War_. Yes, technically she was here as an Ashcroft Advisor, specialising in combating Harbinger-level threats, but everyone would look at her, and see the insignia of an O-4. She just knew it. Maybe she needed some kind of special 'Advisor' uniform for this kind of event. Or maybe just some kind of promotion, given that she was now responsible for _two_ capital units.

Certainly, it would make what she was about to say go down better.

"With respect, sir," Major Katsuragi said, "no, it is extremely unlikely. All studies indicate that the Migou are hostile to all other extranormal entities..."

The occult expert leaned forwards. "Explain the Wilmarth papers, then," he said. "They're quite clear; the Migou... or Mi-go, as Wilmarth romanised the Tibetan word... have been known to consort with extranormal entities."

The Major nodded, in a way which made it clear that she disagreed with him. "We have to look at both the unreliability of men like Albert Wilmarth, who," she sighed, "you have to remember, _was_ a academic in the 1920s and, well... the simple fact that the Migou do not act exactly like the Mi-go described in that man's records."

Inwardly, she cursed. She'd got dragged down into this, and this man could probably out-academic her, given that was his profession, while she'd only studied the occult for its use in operational planning. As a result, her knowledge could be described as _focussed_, lacking broader context.

"... but that wasn't the main thing," she hastily added. "We saw Migou attacking it, so, even if they did summon it, they've lost control of it, and want it _gone_." She forced herself not to swallow. "The main foe here is the Harbinger... Harbinger-5, Mot. We _know_ what the Migou can do. We don't know exactly what the Harbinger can do, but we do know it can do that." She pointed at the darkened screen, which had been showing the autocensored feed. "Did you see that... what it did to the crust? Imagine if a city had been in the way!"

There was silence in the room.

"With respect, _Major_," the Minister of War, a thin-faced woman with mid-length brown hair, said, "the past evidence doesn't support you. Both Harbingers Three and Four were eliminated by your Group's mecha, supported by a single city's defence forces." Her eyes were slightly wild, as she added, "We're looking at a catastrophic breach in the Eastern Front, here! This could be worse than Alaska!"

"Yes, it could," Misato conceded, "but if we can't stop the Harbinger here..."

"... then, what?" an olive-skinned Vice Admiral asked, through gritted teeth. "What will happen that can be worse that what the Migou can do? Let's make this clear. There is a chance that, if we don't stop them here, Europe could fall! And you know what happened when we lost Russia. Millions will be Blanked and turned into weapons against us, both Infiltrators and Combat Blank armies, the Migou will tighten their chokehold, they'll have a path down into Africa... and, more simply, _we don't have much more we can lose_. North America's in the same state as Europe... Australia's barely holding out... only Africa and South America are anywhere near safe. We can't afford any more widescale losses. Morale will be crushed, too; it's only holding out because there haven't been any major losses since '86. And even if it doesn't, and we stop them after... what, a few hundred kilometres, we'll lose territory that we'll have to spend too scarce resources to reclaim. So what can be worse?"

"... then we'll miss the best chance we have of stopping it before it gets into more densely populated areas, sir," the Major said, her face held rigid. "When we consider the force concentrations available to us at the moment, this is the best place. Otherwise, it'll get away from the immediate frontlines, and into less expendable territory."

There were nods from the other people at the conference. It was a valid point, certainly.

The man shook his head. "No, Major," he said. "I disagree. Obviously, we can all see that our priority here is to hold back the Migou, and prevent them from turning this one hole in a front to a widespread rout. And, fortunately, _letting_ the Harbinger pass without trying to attack it until we're ready is better. Because... TETHYS? Has the analysis of the projected path of Harbinger-5 been completed?"

The ARvatar of the TITAN appeared, a blue-green sphere, floating silently. "Yes, sir," it reported, its voice female, with a faint Spanish accent. "The entity designated Mot is moving at approximately fifty metres per second, along a constant spheroid vector for fastest intersection with London-2. ETA: Approximately 17:00, BST. However, considering its elevation and the height of the above-ground arcology superstructure, it will be in range approximately 2300 seconds before that theoretical time. Also, note that this assumes constant velocity, and that the beam-like weapon which displayed crust-penetrating capacity is not used."

Misato swallowed. Less than thirteen hours. The previous two, and whatever the anomaly had been, may have just appeared, but now they had time to at least prepare.

"Thank you, TETHYS," the naval officer said. "Note that projected path. Note how it takes it through largely uninhabited territory. Ladies, gentlemen, I propose that we concentrate the frontline forces at holding off the Migou incursion, because we _know_ how much of a threat that it, and pull forces away from the path of Harbinger-5. By prior precedent," he nodded at Misato, a twist on his lips, "we know that firepower can slow down a Harbinger, and... well, remember that Harbinger-4 was crippled by a coordinated assault, even before it was killed. Hence, I propose that we move up the Atlantic Reserve Fleet," the TITAN showed projections of estimated time of arrival at the man's words, "and scramble the asset of the Evangelion Group."

"The assets," Misato interrupted. "Two now. Unit 00 has had a successful start-up test. We would prefer to have more time, but subject to final approval, it is frontline capable."

"Even better, even if it's a little light for the firepower _we'll_ be using." The Vice Admiral smiled lazily; a smile which did not reach his narrowed eyes. "Because we're not just going to wait and shoot at it. Ladies, gentlemen, I propose that we only assault after we... soften up the target."

"Isn't that what the Migou are doing?" asked a woman in a naval uniform.

"Well, they didn't hit it hard enough," was the cold response. "And let the Migou have their go at it. I'm sure they won't mind terrible if we can take our own little advantages, from their distraction..."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The air in the room was chill, and the hot-metal scent of micrologically enforced cleanliness grated at the nostrils and ran along the tongue. In the centre of the room, lit in a bright white spotlight, was a clear, coffin-like arrangement. And in the coffin was eighty-three kilogrammes of meat and bone, with all sorts of cunning wires and feedtrubes stuck into it, which was being examined for information. At least, that was all what the example of _Homo sapiens nazzadi_ undergoing the trawl was, in the eyes of the law.

Genetics did not determine personhood, in the domain of the New Earth Government. It was easy to be born as a member of an approved human subspecies. To be a person... that was a state which was considerably easier to lose.

Agent Mary Anderson of the Office of Internal Security checked the screen, noted that the LAI had already corrected for the hormonal imbalance, and, after further examination, noted in the record that the change was approved. Sitting back down, she sighed. She hated working late like this. She should be home right now, sleeping (and sadly only that, because she should have work tomorrow) with her boyfriend. But in the Office of Internal Security, as with all the civilian police agencies, you tended to work to the job, not to the clock. Especially when you were a trained neurobiologist, and thus your skills were not exactly in massive surplus. She'd just drawn the short straw by the dehumanisation forms for this subject coming through towards the end of her shift, and she'd been told by her superior that this was high priority. Even if this was almost just make-work which could have been handled by LAIs, you _needed_ a trained individual there, to take legal responsibility for what happened. Dehumanisation forms weren't just thrown around, after all; you needed a court order to get them, in all but emergency cases.

"Correction performed; although higher brain functions remain paralysed, it proved necessary to increase serotonin levels, due to a fall. Mapping of base limbic core functions is, by given reading, eighty three percent complete," she said out loud, to the recording equipment. "Noise from activity in the mesencephalon has been accounted for. At current rate," she glanced over at the screen, "LAI gives an estimated time for start of metencephalon examination as 04:09."

She shook her head, rubbing one blue-gloved hand against her grey-brown forehead, and picked her occult textbook back up. She was having to study for the extra classes the OIS were getting her to take (and considering that it counted for job training, it meant that she was actually being paid for doing so), but she couldn't concentrate on that, not right now. God damn all filmmakers and anyone who encouraged people to think that you could just stick some wires in someone's head and read their mind. A trawl, especially on a living subject like this, was hard work, trying to read a dynamic, emergent system with relatively crude tools, and compare it to known effects. It certainly wasn't 'mind-reading'; it was psychosurgery, reading associations and responses to triggers, which it was then necessary to try to pin together as thoughts in the blank, cloned brains wired up to computers down in the basement.

This wouldn't even be necessary if the basta... subject wasn't warded against parapsychic intrusion. Of course, that was in most cases basically a mark of guilt for something, because all civilian-legal defences should have had a key which allowed due authority to unravel the sorcerous procedure more easily. They already had enough to put it away for twenty years, after reassignment of human rights, for 'consorting with illegal sorcerers' and 'use of illegal sorcery to hinder a judicial investigation'. But the question was; what was the subject hiding?

The machinery bleeped. Agent Anderson checked it, and squinted slightly, before inputting a series of new commands.

"Slight raise in core cerebral temperature of 0.3 K noted. The rate of flow of blood-substitute was checked; it remains constant, and..." she scrolled down, "... temperature of substitute remains constant. To inhibit neural activity, rather than increase the flow, which might risk damaging capillaries, levels of neural inhibition compound Pharmant-67 were increased by four parts per million. Dosage remains within green zone."

Quite a lot, was the answer. Because in the raid that had bought it in, the subject had opened fire on the SPAAT team, and the CATSEYE sensors had detected several signatures which matched known extranormal familiar breeds. And that was before the fact that one of the people that they had been meeting with had turned into a monsterous... thing which had torn out the guts of one of the officers in the semi-powered armour _through_ her suit, and then jumped out a window, and through the floor, like some kind of mist.

The _amlaty_ shook her head, as she lowered her head back down to her occult textbook, and the meat and bone and machine twitched. _People like that were just sick,_ she thought, before mentally chiding herself. No. Not people like that. _Things_ like that. Personhood excluded that kind of activity.

An alarm, student, urgent, but not dangerous sounded from the machinery, and she spun on her chair.

"Unregulated movement in limbs," she barked out loud, training taking over. "Checking status... spinal cord remains severed! I repeat, spinal cord remains severed, no nerve regeneration! Administering Red dose of muscle relaxants directly to active zones," silently, she blessed the sense of paranoia which meant that those injectors were always there, even when you had installed a bypass in the nerves, "... muscle activity has diminished, but remains present." She took a breath. "I shall now proceed to halt the main procedure, until the source of these anomalies has been determined. I shall begin by..."

Suddenly, in her harcontacts, an exploded image of the subject's brain appeared, lines sketched in the air in red, apart from one section of white and bilious green. There was... something in the brain. Something that she was sure hadn't been there before.

[Warning! Irregular brain growth!] reported the LAI in the machine, as the bilious green shape in the Augmented Reality projection spread and grew, in an almost vein-like profusion.

She worked her mouth silently. "Major anomaly in the subject's cerebellum... it's moving. Growing. I'm going to terminate." Tossing the book away, she jumped to her feet, and slammed her palm into the big, bright red button on the side of the vivisection tube, before she began to back away, pistol already drawn, her eyes wild. Alarms began to sound, suddenly much more panicked, and, in the back of her consciousness, she registered that they were not _her_ alarms.

[Termination One activated. Stand clear. Physical isolation activating in three... two... one... physical isolation complete,] announced the LAI, as diamond blast-shields slammed down from the ceiling, locking the abandoned workstation within an adamant cage. [Warning. Do not cross red line. Wards activating in three... two... one... emergency containment wards activated,] it added.

Within the machine, the blood-replacement flowing through the subject's veins, arteries and capillaries suddenly solidified, molecular level structures cross-linking and bonding to form a secondary skeleton. In fact, that statement was not true; the hardened synthetic blood was more rigid than the real skeleton, although brittle, and prone to shatter in a way which only caused more damage, should the... the entity continue to move.

"I... I'm back at the safe distance, by the secondary controls," Agent Anderson announced to the recording devices, panting. "Th-the subject is not displaying any further movement, which suggests that," her hands began to fly over the solid, overengineered buttons, "that Termination One was successful. The El... the LAI containment protocols activated successfully, and the subject is now physically and sorcerously conta..."

Her monologue was interrupted by the arrival of a security detachment of officers, suited up in containment gear. One had a flamethrower, and the other three wide-bore sharders.

"Is it contained?" the lead figure snapped, weapon pointed at her.

She nodded, quite deliberately trying to force herself to not move or flinch. "Termination One activated... physical and sorcerous. It's... I don't think it's moving anymore. No vital signs but then the... it wasn't the human tissue that was the issue."

"Can you set off Termination Two!" the androgynous figure, made sexless by the ANaMiNBC gear, ordered, in a way which wasn't a question despite the wording.

"That'll ruin the implants... but, yes... yes I can," Agent Anderson answered, after accessing the command functions. "I don't think it's necessary... it... whatever it was... it isn't moving, and it's contained, but..."

"Do it," the figure ordered her. "Every single active trawl subject... and some dead ones too... are showing signs of extranormal cellular activity. We're pulling everyone out, 'till we sweep the place."

The _amlaty_ swallowed. "Let me just prime... okay... Authorisation, Anderson, Mary," she swallowed, mouth dry, "Personal TSEAP Termination code Alpha-Gamma..." she began to rattle off a series of numbers and Greek letters before the LAI chimed, and a bright orange-whiteness lit the sealed unit. She sighed a breath of relief, something which was almost knocked out of her by the almost-shove from the containment officer.

"What the hell is going on?" she asked, as they bustled her along the corridor.

"I don't know," the figure said, voice tinny through the filters. Standing this close, she could see the panic in the other woman's (and it was a woman, under the tinted faceplate) eyes. "I don't _harangojy_ know."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The eastern horizon was just beginning to pick up a hint of light, the blackness taking on hints of dark, almost velvety blue. To the south, the Harbinger may have punched through the lines, to unleash a torrent of Migou forces who dashed themselves against its geometrical shape, but the war did not revolve around such things.

Certainly, for Second Lieutenant Salou Danda, he had more to care about than whatever was going on to the south. Largely because he, and his wing of three other Dawn scout mecha, or _Inevaturadski_, to give the Nazzadi name, were trying to navigate the local Migou sensor grid without all dying horribly. Or worse.

The term 'scout mecha' was actually a singularly inaccurate term. Mecha, quite simply, did not scout. They combined a high profile with a noisy means of locomotion. Even in cities, the bane of ground pressure and hidden traps was enough that they didn't go in first. It was the drones which used the mecha and their support pointer as a mobile control base who did the scouting. The mecha were the units which acted on the information in areas too covered for air support to come in, the human minds on the ground who reduced the information separation for the drones, and were the ones who called in the tanks.

"Hold," he sent over the tightbeam laser link with the rest of his squad. Barely breathing, he stared at the images in his Eyes from the drones, the movements of the Loyalist patrol. It was simply the will of Allah that kept him and his men alive, he thought, with a hint of fatalism, but at least they were only Loyalists, not Elite or Migou, and thus they were probably blind to the drones. Not that the Nazzadi Elite or the Migou were used for scouting and reconnaissance duties, for the most part; they were less expendable. "Standard Whiskey-Eyes scout cluster," he muttered to himself, making sure that he wasn't accidentally broadcasting the signal.

The squad remained motionless for almost ten long minutes, waiting for the Loyalist group; a solid trio of mecha squadrons, with air support and dedicated surveillance equipment, to pass.

"Okay, move," he ordered, once the threat had passed. "Dancing Boy, how are the drones?" he asked the specialist in his wing.

"Drones still ghosting, Thirteen," noted Second Lieutenant Santiago. "Green-Seven is within possible detection range for Whiskey-Eyes One, but Green-One, Green-Three, Green-Four and Green-Five are all safed."

"Good. Current route clear?" he asked his own legionnaire LAI.

[Affirmative. No targets detected. No mines detected. Active hostile detection methods are within safe levels.]

"'Kay." The man bit his lip. "Move to Waypoint Echo then, Bounding Overwatch, rotate teams. Me and Jazzman are Charlie, Teacher and Dancing Boy, you're Delta."

"Understood," the sole woman in his wing, and the heavy weapons specialist, replied, her tone laconic. "I'll hold Dancing Boy's hands, and make sure he doesn't get too distracted by the drones."

In the darkness, the lead two mecha were blurs of barely seen motion, their stealth equipment blending in to the background, A-Pods reducing their ground pressure to less than an infantryman. That was the design compromise in the Dawn; they traded raw power and cooling capacity for a reduced effective weight and mobility. They did not so much run as bound, and these conditions were nearly optimal for them; they would not be able to get away with this speed, and remain undetected, in daylight.

"Thirteen, I'm running hot," noted Lieutenant Owenusari, his surname clue enough to his mixed heritage. "Still safe, but it's building up faster than it should."

"Understood." And he did; stealthed units had to try to balance heat unlike any other unit, because it didn't matter if one was optically invisible, if one stuck out like a flare on IR. Add that to the fact that they were small enough that there was an imbalance between their D-In/D-Out levels, and the reduction in tolerance that came from their mobile design, and it could get touchy.

The two mecha landed, the blurs fading into nothingness, as they began to cover the movement of the other two. And, slowly, alternating, they advanced through the hostile territory, moving towards their target, a Migou airbase. Above, the crack of supersonic craft could be heard, and the slight pulse in the earth spoke of explosions and high-recoil weaponry in the distance.

And just for a fraction of a second, one who was watching the south might have seen a shower of meteors, which was interrupted when a black lance, its width negligible compared to its length, pierced the heavens, as Mot swatted another Migou weapons platform which dared fire upon it.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Ritsuko cleared her throat, and inwardly cursed herself for the habit. Of course Gendo knew she was there.

"Report." His words were curt, perfunctory; he did not even turn to face her, instead staring out over the Geocity, lit by false stars.

"Following the successful reactivation of Evangelion Unit 00, Representative, we have uploaded the final calibration data to the MAGI" Ritsuko said, keeping her voice objective. "Given that the First Child is holding her synchronisation ratio at a steady fifty three, plus or minus three, percent, and that there has not been a recurrence of the... of the previous incident..." she paused, "...it is my opinion, as Director of Science for Project Evangelion, that we can use it for DELTA."

The man partially turned, his arglasses glinting in the lights of his office. "Are you sure, Doctor?" he asked.

_You could maybe use my name_, Ritsuko thought, with a hint of annoyance that she hoped didn't show on her face. "Yes," she said, confidently.

Gendo Ikari gave a single, curt nod. "We shall see," he said. "And the upcoming operation?"

"Although Unit 00 is still utilising the Type-A armour, while both Units 01 and 02 have been upgraded to variants of the Type B, it is still combat ready. We will have to use a cargo-transport for the Evangelion, though, as the Type-A lacks drop-compatibility."

He stared at her for what she felt to be a second too long. "Good," he said, eventually. "That will need to be fixed, of course." His eyes flicked across the display on his glasses. "You are deploying the Type-9 charge beam and the auxiliary capacitors, I note," the man remarked.

"Yes, sir." Ritsuko swallowed. "Major Katsuragi believes... is of the opinion that, with access to the power supply of the troopship that we are using to move Unit 00, we can set up an increased refire rate, by using the ship's D-Engine to charge the capacitors. The MAGI agree with her."

The man nodded. "A satisfactory solution. You should task some of your subordinates with ensuring that we can perform this as a standard operation, rather than as a field project."

Ritsuko nodded. "Yes, Representative. I'll look into it." She paused. "Will that be all?"

"No," Gendo said. In a few steps, he closed the distance between them, and pulled one gloved hand from a pocket. In it, there were two diamond cylinders, about the size of a man's thumb. "I have secured authorisation from the Council, after consulting the Minister of War, for the use of the Harlequin systems on the Evangelions. These unlock keys permit one firing per Unit, and have a," he glanced to the left slightly, "twenty-three hours and fifty-four minutes active lifespan. Task your engineering teams to load the weapons."

They hung from Ritsuko's fingers, gleaming in the light. There was a certain gleam to them, as if they had been dipped in oil, and then dried off. It was probably deliberate.

"I understand, sir," she said.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Far Shores Actual, this is Fire Eagle One. Releasing drones... drones are go. Monitoring status."

It should have been so easy. The drones were LAI platforms, consisting of an A-Pod, a D-Fridge, and a D-Engine, with massive amounts of stealth-technology applied. They had almost no radar signature, were background temperature, thanks to the careful heat balance, and, when still, were almost invisible in the visible and UV spectra, too. Even the Migou had problems finding them, if conditions were clear. Dropped off by a stealthed plane, lurking behind the curve of the Earth, they should have been able to lurk, hanging in the air, to gather data from Mot and its activities.

Harbinger-5 unerringly picked them off, as soon as they entered its line of sight.

And as a massive pentagonal trapezohedron, hundreds of metres high, that was not a short distance. What perhaps made it worse was that it was not engaging the missiles fired at it until they got closer, a few tens of kilometres away. It was like it was aware that the warheads on those things could not scratch it, but it did not wish for them to get information.

"Far Shores Actual, all drones are fubar. Retreating as per orders."

At least we're getting to see what its beams do to stuff," Misato said, morosely, as another wave of drones blinked out of existence, the _second_ line giving quite adequate evidence as to the effects.

"The weapon has been noted to propagate at c. It takes the form of a linear beam, which is unaffected by gravity, electromagnetism, or, to the best of our knowledge, any other forces. Yield is UNKNOWN; weapon does not inflict damage by conventional mechanisms. Penetrative capacity is UNKNOWN. As it is, the target is capable of manifesting one beam from each intersection-point; these beams can be sustained for, at minimum, 11.2 seconds. Maximum duration is UNKNOWN."

The Major listened to the report from the naval TITAN with a frown. Technically, it was reassuring to know that at least these were known unknowns, compared to the capacities exhibited by previous Harbingers, when they hadn't even known what they could do. Like the odd, physics-defying condensation wave of Harbinger-3. It was less reassuring to continually receive proof that Harbinger-5 was exceptionally good at targeting and destroying anything which came into range, no matter how hidden it was. Because she was in charge of trying to find a good attack position for two 40 metre tall robots, when even a car-sized, steathed, radar-neutral, D-Fridge-cooled...

Oh, God. It was that simple, wasn't it? She'd studied this. Well, not exactly this, but it was all too familiar, she realised, as her brain put it together.

"TETHYS," the Major snapped, "get me all the files on the Harbinger-1 incident!"

"Major Misato Katsuragi, you only have a..."

"All the files that I'm cleared for, stupid!" she corrected herself. "That should be obvious!"

Yes... she would need to check. But if she was correct, then there might just be a way. And, oddly, an Evangelion might be able to do something that the Navy's capital ships couldn't, because an Evangelion was _flawed_. They were too small for even a frigate-scale D-Engine, and so were forced to rely on multiple smaller ones designed for a much smaller unit. As a result, they were under armed for their size, and even the addition of hand-held weaponry could not make up for the deficit in firepower. But that meant that they could have the power sources shut off independently, and were able to function, if poorly, on low power if multiple Engines were taken out. And since the Harbinger seemed to 'see' the D-Rifts in a unit, they could make the Evangelions 'look' like smaller targets. In fact, if they installed supplementary batteries, and ran power through an external cable...

To put it simply, they should be able to the Evangelion almost invisible. It would have a profile similar to a unmanned drone, if her hypothesis was correct, which means that they could hide much, much closer, and the Harbinger should prioritise... well, pretty much anything over them.

Major Katsuragi only hoped that 'almost' would be enough.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The woman's face was pressed up against the transparent material, a thin line of drool running down the surface from where her mouth touched it. Her white garments, padded and thick, but permitting her free movement, had the yellow stripes of a dabbler into illegal sorceries. She tried to raise one hand to bang against the diamond, but the smart materials in the clothing suddenly went solid, and she lost balance, tumbling backwards onto the padded floor, rocking slightly.

She was yelling something, but whatever it was, it was inaudible to the guards outside, flicking through channel after channel of footage from the cells, flagged by the sentinel LAI systems for a human's attention.

"Something has them on edge," one muttered nervously. "Allah, but I hate it when it's like this."

"Too true," her colleague muttered. "I swear, it's days like this, when they all start acting up..."

[Subject displays distress. From her vitals, she has a heavily elevated heartrate, and high levels of neurotransmitters associated with fear. Recommend neurosedation.]

The first woman nodded. "Makes sense, I'd say. Agreed?"

The _nazzady_ nodded. "Agreed." On the monitor, the woman's struggles diminished, and she slowly sank to her knees, before lying down, resting her head on her arms. "Get her straightjacket to administer a muscle relaxant, and to move her body to the bed when we know she's asleep."

"Sure." The first guard shook her head. "What were you saying?"

"Yep. Let's see, next one..." The dark-skinned woman shook her head. "Days like this are just so depressing. I just have to remind myself that once I get the degree, I can go get another job."

"I know what you mean. This supervision duty... it grinds you down."

"The worst bit's probably how Sentry could probably do all our jobs. It's not like..."

[Subject displays distress. From her vitals, she has a heavily elevated heartrate, and high levels of neurotransmitters associated with fear. Subject has attempted to draw on floor in own saliva. Strongly recommend neurosedation.]

Both women glanced at the woman held rigid on the floor by her straightjacket exosuit, pinned down in a cruciform shape. The fingers on the suit had flowed, bonding together to prevent any precision.

"Agreed? We'll need to manually note this in her file, too, as a secondary. She's," she glanced at the screen, "... yeah, she's in for summoning. I don't want to release her jacket from lockdown until everyone else calms down, hmm?"

"Agreed. I hate these _haranojy_ summoners." The _nazzady_ shook her head. "As I was saying, it's not like we don't take its recommendations like nine times out of ten."

"Well, you know, you gotta have humans in the loop. It's only a dumb LAI, after all. It's just triggering things if the stuff in their brains or blood changes too much. Or if their motions aren't permitted. It doesn't actually know what they're doing, like we do."

Her colleague glanced over at her. "Yeah, I know. It's... I'll be glad to be out of here."

"I know what you mean."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Shinji Ikari ran his hands down his face, squeezing his eyes shut. He could feel the subtle shift and sway of the superheavy lifter underneath them; luckily, the anti-airsickness medication seemed to be holding out. The boy tried opening his eyes again. The scene before him had not changed.

"Let me get this straight," he said. "We're going to be deployed to an open mine, which is just next to the path the Harbinger is taking?"

The Major nodded. "Yes. So should it go wrong, it will be easier to evacuate."

"And then they're going to nuke it. With... really big ones." Shinji shuddered; he still remembered the grey, crumbling facade of the Victoria Arcology. How much worse would it be at the scales they were talking about?

"It's a conventional weapon," Misato pointed out, accurately reading his expression and slight look of nausea. "You don't want to use an a-chrom one that big."

"Oh, okay." The boy nodded. "I understand that bit. It makes sense." A certain twist entered his voice. "But the bit you just mentioned. The bit where you shut down almost all our engines and coolant systems. And then don't even turn them back on when the attack begins. That makes less sense."

"We realised that the target is attacking anything with D-Rift technology. Things just running off batteries, or with fuel propellants don't get hit, until it decides that they're a threat. But it sees all kinds of D-Rifts as a threat, we think."

Shinji bit down on his lip. "Um... I hate to be obvious, but don't we need the D-Engines to, you know, power the weapons and the Eva, and generally _do anything_?"

The black-haired woman, her hair pinned back, blinked. "Yes. For weapons and movement, we'll be running power to the Evangelions from elsewhere; cables are already being set up, and the Navy is lending two frigates, because they're too light against this enemy. Life support will be running off batteries."

Rei had barely moved since the briefing began, only the slight sway from the motion of the transport. Now, she raised a hand.

"Yes, Rei?"

"Without the effective increase in inertial mass given by the D-Brake, both the Babylon and the Type-13 are non-viable. The stress will shear them apart."

The Major leant back slightly. "Yes. That's right. So we have to keep some running. Which means you're still going to be targets, just... smaller ones. Now... to continue the briefing..."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

A female Nazzadi sat in a chair, unaugmented eyes flicking over the profusion of hexagonal screens before her, her bland, unlined features profoundly lacking in contrast in this light. Black-gloved hands flicked over the keyboard, and she leant forwards, tilting her head slightly, before leaning back. Unconsciously, she adjusted the set of her black frock coat, before standing up.

Against the lit screens, she was a figure of night, surrounded by a babbling in the background, the susurration of whispering communications systems.

"Widespread civil disturbance all across Europe and Northern Africa," she said, her words characteristic of the rigidly precise English learned by first-generation Nazzadi. "Lesser anomalous behaviour in sensitives globally, induced by nightmares of endless darkness. Stand-alone spontaneous public disturbances. Reports from the OIS that subjects under trawl or otherwise undergoing extreme physical and mental stress are exhibiting Budapest Syndrome. The presence of Harbinger-5. Widespread conflict all along the Eastern European front." She shook her head, once.

"Yes, Director," one of the voices said, as the rest fell quiet, only a buzz at the edge of hearing.

"Should an evacuation be ordered of any major arcology, the Society will use the chance to strike at Chyrsalis facilities. And, at the same time, Chrysalis will use the chance to further its own objectives in the chaos. What a mess."

"That is what the reports state, Director."

"Watch," she said, tone considered. "We will not act, but instead observe. We need to know the pathways both factions use. Neither faction will wish to have their..." she coughed, "..._special_ agents linked to concrete identities. We have to secure those weak spots." She paused, tilting her head again. "I did not receive any reports of the existence of confirmed organised cult activity in the service of Harbinger-5," she added, her fingers curling slightly.

"No, Director," a second voice stated. "Although some disturbances match the known metrics of Harbinger-5, we have not established any pattern of human organisation. As you yourself said, from available evidence, such things are stand-alone, and lack the cohesion that, say, cults associated with the Melqart-entity typically exhibit."

She wiped one hand against her forehead. "That, at least, is somewhat fortunate," the _nazzady_ said, a hint of relief creeping into her voice, before it settled again. "We must not weaken, though. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

"We can take no actions against the physical manifestation of the entity identified under the Geneva Protocols as Mot."

The woman nodded. "Yes. We lack the resources. But we shall try to cauterise the wounds that deluded idiots will try to open in the chaos." She paused. "It will be necessary to aid the Office of Internal Security in preventing the spread of Budapest Syndrome. It must not be permitted to get out of hand, or we will be forced to deploy the Watch for containment. And that will be... messy."

"Understood, Director. I will task the deployment of Amici units to support the OIS's containment efforts in all areas where it has been noted... that is, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Standard cover procedures will be in place, and force will be appropriate."

"Good. And... Andersdóttir?"

"Yes, Director?"

"... it does not matter. Carry out your duties, Andersdóttir."

And with that said, Director Khoury Vuilumiri oy Jenufabrikati oy Chicago-Twi vy Teoranazy vy Minugijy sat back down. She was named for parents who had never been real, and she had been created as a biological twenty-five year-old, out in the Oort cloud, as a soldier in a fleet with no history. And, turning back to the screens, she resumed her vigil as the Director of the Office of Special Services, which did not exist.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The dark-haired woman sighed, and glanced at her flatma... at the Third Child.

_No,_ she thought, staring at him. _I can't think of him like that. Not now._ Rei may have vanished off somewhere, when she wasn't looking, but Shinji was still sat here in the briefing room, a decidedly green cast to his features. His face was pale, and whitened knuckles gripped the arm of the seat and a sick-bag equally tightly. The boy's blue eyes were closed.

"How are you feeling, Shinji?" she asked, unsure if that was how to start with him.

"I'm... I'm scared," Shinji whispered after a pause, his voice thick with stress. "Just... terrified." He glanced up at Misato. "I d-don't know if I can do this. I... I..." there was a thin burst of nervous laughter, "I don't even know if _I_ can stand up, let alone get my Eva to do so."

"Well, you know, you don't need to. You get to lie down for the entire operation," Misato said with a smile, which vanished almost instantly. "No, that's not helpful," she said, before he could say anything. "I'm sorry, it sounded better in my head." Slowly, she lowered herself into the chair next to him. "It might help to talk. I find... I used to find that it helped. Actually... that comment was how I kinda deal with it." She winced. "I'm nervous too."

The boy glared at her. "You get to be in the nice safe command vehicle," he said bluntly. "I don't. I get to be lying there, h-h-hoping that it doesn't blow me up."

Misato nodded solemnly. "I know," she said, gently, not mentioning that the command vehicle wasn't exactly safe. Not when there were capital units, let alone a Harbinger, anywhere nearby. "It's not fair. And if I could, I'd take your place, but I can't. No-one else can. There's just you, and Rei, and As... Test Pilot Soryu, and she's over in Chicago-2 and managed to fracture her wrist yesterday, at the worst possible time."

There was a sick-sounding bubble of laughter from the boy. "I bet my _father_ would still force me to do it if I broke my wrist, you know."

"Well..." _Yes, he would. If it was needed,_ Misato thought, but didn't say.

It was enough. "He would. I mean, look at the state Rei was in when he forced me in the first time, and she was going to do it, too." He wiped at his arms with his sleeve. "I w-wonder if there's some other kid out there not knowing that he's going to be dragged in if both of us get k..." he grabbed for the sick-bag, and retched into it.

"Easy, there," Misato said, feeling horribly ineffectual. "You're not going to be killed. We'll get you out. And, come on, if the Harbinger targets D-Rifts... and it does," she added, not liking the tone of uncertainty, "then you two will be some of the smallest targets on the battlefield. We're shutting down your engines and stuff for a reason."

"I know... I mean, I know _intellectually_," the boy managed. "But the idea of being out there, the idea that I could run out of power." He shook his head. "It's scary. Everything's scary." He shivered, which turned into a gagging noise, and the bag was raised again.

"Don't try too hard to stop yourself being sick. It feels better once it happens," Misato advised, speaking from experience. "And," she raised one finger, as she rummaged around in a pocket, before tossing a packet of slightly warm juice onto his lap, "here. You'll probably want something to wash the taste out, afterwards."

Face clammy, he raised his head slightly. "Now, once you say it, it's not going to happen," he muttered. "But... thanks."

The black-haired woman sighed. "Think about it," she tried. "I mean, this time, you are not alone. You've got Rei supporting you, and, come to be clear, the Atlantic Reserve Fleet is going to be attacking at the same time, plus all the local forces we could scramble, plus several brigades we pulled from Paris-2 and Ostberlin-2. It's not just you."

"It's... it's just so big," Shinji muttered, feeling pathetic. "You know, at least with Harbinger-4, it was about my size, and... well, I knew that other things could hurt it. And... and it may have had laser whip-things, but this is just..." his eyes were distant, "... just too much." He shook his head, an sighed, a deep, shuddery breath. "How does she stay so calm?" he said, under his breath.

Unfortunately for him, Misato had very, very good hearing. "Who, me?"

"No," the boy said, reluctantly. "Rei."

The woman blinked, heavily. That was something she couldn't explain herself. Come to think of it, back when she'd been a pilot, she'd have been freaked out if one of her squad hadn't been showing nerves before something big. She _had_ been freaked out, back in '86, when one of her squad hadn't shown any nerves, but hadn't said anything, and then, the next day... she forced those memories, and dead faces, back down. No wonder Shinji was getting more worried; it was uncanny, and he wasn't prepared to deal with this kind of thing.

"I don't know," she said, hating herself for not having a better answer. "It's just the way she is, I think." Slowly, she slipped her hand over his, feeling the cold clamminess of his flesh, and squeezed reassuringly. "But... Shinji," she said, staring at him, "... it's all right to be terrified. That's just the way you are. It's all right to be sick. I just want to know that you feel all right, and that you think you'll be able to follow the plan. Because if you don't think you can, we'll all be in trouble; you, Rei, us in the command vehicle..." She left it hanging, left all the other people who might die if they didn't stop the Harbinger unmentioned.

She saw his jaw work, his eyes squeezed shut, and teeth grit together. But his hand squirmed under hers, and turned over, to grip hers tightly. "I can do it," he managed, weakly. "Don't worry about me."

The hand was released, as he grabbed the sick-bag and was nosily ill in it. She reached out, and tucked an errant lock of hair back, to avoid it getting in the way of the contents of his stomach. "Oh Shinji," she said, softly, "you won't mind if I worry about you. Just a little bit?"

The hand was retracted

"Misato?"

"Yes?" she asked, as she got up, slowly, to check over the plans again and see how the deployment of the naval forces was going.

"Thank you."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The blue-and-grey of ArcSec, and the darker vehicles of the OIS were clustered around the office building. The hulking figures of men and women in power armour were spaced along the cordon, behind deployed armour shielding, watching the exits. The other buildings, around this place, had already been commandeered by sniper teams, and they were watching, in vain, for any movement within the facility. The sound of police sirens, chatter, and the movement of armoured feet was a flowing river of background noise to all activities.

"Right... what we got?" asked the stocky woman, leaning into the command van. They had already cordoned off the building, and the evacuation process was beginning, made easier by the fact that this was not a residential district. "Sorry for the delay," she explained. "Checkpoints, and they ran a neural scan on the way in."

Agent Hikara sighed slightly, and turned to glance at his superior. "Captain," he said, by way of greeting. "Hostage situation... you know Clarity Arcanopharm?"

Captain Joyeuse nodded, after a moment's pause. "Grigori-A's looking into them, aren't we? IPcorp?"

"Yes. They're licensed to conduct sorcerous and variant-matter experimentation... mostly medicinal, but there's oddities in the in/out flow of variant r-state materials." Red eyes glanced down at the screen before him. "Mostly low-state organic molecules... they're only allowed up to carb-8-on, and hydro-6-gen."

"They've been audited recently, and they came up clean," added Agent Gjorgji Mile, "but they're still on the watchlist."

There was a shudder from the agents, because this had the potential to get _messy_.

Agent Junira groaned, his milk-coloured hand colliding with his forehead. "Great. So they've snapped and gone crazy in all the funny stuff that's happening tonight."

"No... this is the corporate HQ," Gjorgji said. "There shouldn't be anything here. Anything dangerous here, that is."

"And they're the ones who hit the panic button," Hikara added, running a hand through his hair. "We're only here because they're under investigation." He cleared his throat. "Anyway, display personnel details on screen," he ordered an LAI.

[Yes, sir.]

The agents of the State Secuity Task Force on Non-Governmental Organisations (A) stared up at the details, the list of registered occupants of the building drawing most of the attention.

"What the hell are so many people doing in at the moment?" asked an agent.

"Says here they work to a 48-hour day," Gjorgji said, through narrowed eyes. "Check if they're fully licensed for that, Hikara," he told the _nazzada_, and got a nod in response. "Oh, yay." He shook his head. "I hate corps that do that. You just know that they've got those dosage contracts you gotta sign if you want to work there. Exploitative bastards."

Captain Joyeuse shot a glance in his direction. "Have we got the IPcorp to hand over internal systems-link yet?" she asked, her voice distracted.

"Yes, but... whoever's done this is good enough to have cut the hardline, and well..."

The woman sighed. "Don't tell me..."

"Yes. Someone from the _inside_ activated the ArcSec kill-switch on all wireless devices. So... yeah."

Ori Joyeuse tapped her front teeth with a gloved finger. "How long until we've got the area clear, Watcher?" she asked the LAI.

[The adjoining buildings have been cleared. It is estimated that it will take seventeen minutes until the dome has been cleared to the minimum safe distance.]

"And have we got drones in place yet?"

[They are not in position. The control team and their equipment are still en route.]

"Damn." The woman sighed. "Well, we hold, then. We are not going in blind."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The night air was chill. Beneath the chill light of the almost-full moon, the landscape was barren, rocky and almost dead. Only the water pooled at the bottom of the chasms that pock-marked the landscape, and the lichen and mosses that covered the bare rock like tattered skin, made it different from the moon. But this was not some forgotten battlefield from the Arcanotech Wars or the post-Unification conflicts. This was relatively recent, and this was the work of man, and man alone.

The economic logic was undeniable. Arcologies were _hungry_, even with the D-Engine permitting a recycling efficiency which defied conventional thermodynamics. The human war machine devoured all the resources which were fed to it. So, it had been decided that open-cast strip mining was a valid form of resource extraction. This had been a region with notable seams of rare earths, and the rare earths had been taken, along with everything else.

Where had the soil gone? To Warsaw-A, the munitorium of the Eastern European front? No, more likely to Lviv-B, the closest arcology, a pure geocity cluster built under the slagged remains of the original city. It was not relevant. All that mattered was that man had killed the land here, devoured it and left only rock and lichen. And that made it a good place for the assault on the Harbinger. It was expendable; there was no real biome to harm, and there was cover, as mine-shafts plummeted down into the crust, refitted into launch silos once their seams had been exhausted.

In the darkness, floodlights were tiny islands of light, patches which revealed sections of the prone Evangelions, covered in technicians which swarmed and crawled over their surfaces. Unit 00 was a pale bulk in the shade, because, when the fact that the Harbinger seemed to 'see' through the dimensional distortion of D-Rifts was taken into account, repainting it from its white test paint was not the best use of the limited time they had. Slowly, the Evangelion was moved out from inside the hold of the transport ship, as unlike Unit 01, the Prototype could not be carried on the standard superheavy flier. The place where it was going to be sited was already prepared; one of the hardened platform once used by heavy mining equipment was reinforced enough to bear the weight of the Evangelion, even when its A-Pods were turned off. Unit 01 was already prepared, set up with the Type-9 charge beam, connected up to its superconducting cables snaking back into safety.

Time was running short. Because, although the first hints of dawn should have been tinting the eastern horizon red, they did not do so. Visible in the night was a streak of black-beyond-black. Across the east, sharply delineated against the natural deep blues, was terrible, sudden void, slowly creeping up to consume the world, for Harbinger-5 would not tolerate the sun, nor the stars of man, and bore the world it chose with it, as a veil and cloak in this place.

Shinji Ikari rubbed his gloved hands against his face, trying to bring heat to chilled cheeks. The rest of the suit may have been heated, but that just made the exposed face feel even colder. Even extruding the cowl didn't help much, although at least it kept his ears warm. Misato had left them here, as they set up the Evangelions, and she went to consult with the people in charge of this operation. Shaking his head, he glanced over at Rei. She was just standing there, cowl down, eyes locked on the blackness painted like tar across the eastern horizon. He was sure that her plug suit looked thinner, and more form-fitting than his, too. Although that may have been something to do with the fact that it was largely skin-coloured for her.

"Hey, move it!" someone yelled at them. Shinji glanced around, and hastily stepped out of the way of the lifter, the four metre biped sprouting multiple fine manipulator arms. It took him several moments to find where Rei was; she had moved outside the pool of flood-lit brightness, a pale shape barely visible to light-blinded eyes.

"You do not approve of the operation," she said without prompting, as he joined her, outside of the light.

The boy stared at his feet. "It's a stupid plan," he muttered. It was only _after_ he said the words that he recalled that their last individual conversation had ended with her hitting him. And the one before that had involved nudity in a really-not-good-way.

_Going by my luck, she'll probably stand on me in her Eva at the end of this one_, he thought morosely.

She ignored his comment, and squatted down, perched above cold tarmac. Suddenly, in a blur, one hand shot out, to return, something clutched between thumb and index finger. Shinji squinted; it looked vaguely rock-like. No, it wasn't a rock, he realised.

"A snail?" he asked.

"Correct." Two grey eyes stared down at the small gastropod.

"What are you doing with it?"

There was no answer. The muscular, slime-covered flesh of the creature writhed, as it tried to escape from the thing which held it, but the shell which was meant to defend it had been compromised, and it could do nothing to escape.

"Are you interested in snails?" Shinji asked, trying to make conversation.

"No." All her attention seemed devoted to the singular animal.

There was an uncomfortable silence, only broken when the boy let out an uncomfortable chuckle. "I had some as pets when I was very small," he said, in an embarrassed tone. "Yuki and... my foster mothers said that they were easy starter pets, and a lot less... um... hard to look after than a hamster or anything. They'd leave these funny slime trails on the inside of their tank, but sometimes they'd stare at me, when I was giving them food, and I used to wonder what they thought of me, although..."

"No." Her tone was flat. "They did not think of you. They lacked even the limited sapience of mammals. They simply crawled on their stomach-foot, uncaring of the world around them, blind, ruled by instincts. Unthinking, unable to contemplate that they only existed at your sufferance. They understood nothing."

"... well, I know that, but..." Shinji shook his head, slightly annoyed. He _had_ just been trying to make conversation. "They were just pets, you _know_? For a ... six year old, I think. For a small child."

Rei did not turn to face him. "You were five. And you told your foster mothers that you did not want stupid snails, you wanted a guinea pig. That request was rejected, even when you threw a tantrum. And so as a form of retribution, after a while you ignored the stupid snails, and so they starved to death. And it worked; you were bought a guinea pig when you were six."

Shinji was silent, shocked. "How do... why... I did not!" he finally managed. Because there was an echo in his head, of words risen from the depths of the river Lethe that runs through the memory to speak of things that had once happened, and the phrasing, though not the intonation, was familiar.

"Such behaviour has been deemed acceptable by society, for children of that age. You were by no means unique in your actions."

"So... how do you know? Who told you?" he said, the blush fighting with anger for dominance on his already cold-reddened face.

"You are inappropriately defensive," she told him, still staring at the writhing snail, its motions starting to slow, as it exhausted itself. "It is the concept of a pet which is the oddity, not a human killing another creature."

"I don't care about the snail!" Shinji snapped. "It's just... don't... people don't do... argh." He sucked in a breath, and tried to rebalance his thoughts. "You can't just talk about things like that like you do!"

Rei was silent. He honestly couldn't tell if she was paying attention to him or not.

"It's my past!" he finally managed. "Not yours!"

"It is my present," she said, simply. "Because you are here."

The boy worked his jaw a few times, before there was a short, sharp, wet-sounding snap, and Rei wiped her hand on the cold material. Straightening up, she turned to face him, for the first time in the conversation. The moon, so distant and small and cold, was just a few days past full, and though her head blocked it, the light gave her a halo of silvery hair.

"Don't do it," he said, face uneasy. "Just... don't, okay?"

She stared at him, unblinking.

"Please. It's..." he flapped a hand in the air, trying to find a way of putting it, because neither language nor society had adapted properly to the existence of parapsychics, "...weird. You're a postcognitive, right?"

Mutely, she nodded.

"Just... don't say it out loud, please."

"But it happened." There might have been the faintest hints of confusion in her voice. "I know."

"Try to... try to pretend that you don't know." He winced, looking for a response. "Please?"

"Test Pilots, please report to the station point for last checks. I repeat, Test Pilots, please report to the station point."

"We are needed," she said. And without a word, she turned on her heel, and strode off.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Above, the night sky was filled with stars. They did not twinkle, and they did not shine; they were cold, distant points of light. If there were children's tales told of these stars, they were the kind which were censored and bowdlerised, all to keep from infant minds from the terrible truths of the cosmos. The darkness of the void reached from horizon to horizon with no hint of dawn; terrible, unreachable, anathematical to light, which died in its Stygian majesty.

With the debatable safety of the command vehicle, relocated far from the site of the ambush, out of the sight of the Harbinger, Misato shivered. This was not purely a response to the abomination which devoured all light, though that was an influence. A dark dome, running from sky to sky, blocking out all light and leav... that was not something that the woman wished to think about. But if it had been chilly in the night air, it was freezing now. The pentagonal trapezohedron of Mot was a force of palpable cold. The water was freezing out of the air, microscopic hailstones pattering down in a blizzard blown by the thermal imbalance, and underneath, in the areas of the open mine which had flooded, the scream of flash-frozen ice was still audible. Even with the heaters turned up to maximum, there was still a decided nip to the air. She wished she was wearing heated armour.

"It wasn't doing this before," she said, worry in her voice. "Do we know when it started?"

Back in London-2, Ritsuko shook her head. "Not exactly," she replied, "but it seems to have coincided with some of the Migou kinetic strikes on it. We... _think_ it might be something to do with some kind of regeneration-based effect, but..." she shrugged. "For all we know, it might just like the dark and cold." She licked her lips. "Are the Evangelions secured?"

[Unit 01 is braced for impact. Position is **stable**.]

[Unit 00 is braced for impact. Position is **stable**.]

"Yes, they are," the Major said, her tone distracted. "As they were thirty seconds ago." She was distracted, because all eyes were watching the timer count down until the start of the operation.

**{00:01:01}**

The passage of the Harbinger had bought it almost to the target point. It was precisely on schedule; its velocity had not wavered, even when under heavy assault from Migou forces. The vast dark shape, almost invisible in the shade it created, was an overlay in all the target systems locked on it, a wireframe in the autocensors.

**{00:00:37}**

In the entry plug of Unit 01, Shinji Ikari worked his fingers around the controls, taking deep breaths of LCL. The plug suit felt too tight; he could feel the slight stiffness where the inner suit and the outer suit meshed. Trying to put it out of his mind, he ran over the instructions in his head again and again, and tried to put the strange sense of disorientation from the feeling of the Eva being prone out of his mind. His job was to hit the Harbinger with a relativistic beam of charged particles. The LITAN would do the aiming for him; all he had to do was to follow its instructions, and authorise the fire. Hidden behind a blast shield, a safe distance away from the red projected line that Mot would take, he waited.

**{00:00:31}**

Rei Ayanami waited, hands locked tightly around the butterfly control yokes. Grey eyes stared, unblinking, at the interior walls of her plug, at the mass of overlays and read-outs. She was stationed along the line, on the same side as Unit 01. It had been worked out that if the number of vertices limited the number of independent beams that Mot could manifest, it was best to make it split its fire. Unit 00 was marginally closer, too, because the damage output of her Babylon, already aimed at the point where the Harbinger would be when she needed to fire, was less than that of the charge beam, and thus the hostile's fire should be prioritised towards her.

That was an acceptable outcome. She had an inferior synch ratio. It was a tactically sound decision.

**{00:00:20}**

"Final green light from Evangelion Group, Vice Admiral."

[NEGS _Romulus_ is **green**. Alpha Detachment is **green**.]

[NEGS _New Mubai_ is **green**. Bravo Detatchment Detachment is **green**.]

[NEGS _Stefugladisi_ is **green**. Charlie Detachment is **green**.]

"We have green from EuroHighCom, too. They reaffirm consent for use of _Happy Birthday_."

The man smiled. "Good."

**{00:00:00}**

It was time.

Directly underneath Harbinger-5, at the bottom of a now-frozen pool of muddy, residue-contaminated water, lay a little surprise for the incarnate god-thing that would render the world its plaything. Hardened and engineered so that it remained viable at elevated r-state, it waited. Even the sudden, unexpected coldness was nothing; it had been overengineered to such a degree that it could cope.

And when the timer hit zero, it detonated.

A new dawn rose under the dome of eternal night.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Hundreds of kilometres to the north-east, the Migou airbase was an unobtrusive area of flattened ground and low, clustered buildings. The Loyalist defence forces were stationed up-top, in buildings and hangars which looked uncannily like standard, New Earth Government facilities. It was not exactly surprising; form followed function for both the NEG and the Migou, and there were only so many ways that an armoured, camouflaged above-ground facility for a human-proportioned individual could look.

Of course, this staging ground was, in itself, only camouflage for the airbase underneath. It was only with the aid of their sensory equipment that the four Dawn-class reconnaissance mecha even knew it was there; the vehicles launched by magnetic accelerator, as the fungoid beings were capable of handling accelerations that would have squished even a highly modified fighter pilot, and the landing areas only revealed themselves when they were needed.

Lieutenant Danda momentarily deactivated his nerve bypasses, and stretched, before returning to the AR-enhanced cockpit. Hypothetically, this was an easy engagement. Dawns were not heavy assault units; they were built around the principle that if they were getting into a fight which wasn't an ambush, they were doing it wrong. The two backpack vECF missiles on the heavy weapons specialist in the squad were of the same yield as the specialist ammo issued as standard to a main battle tank.

No, they just had to hang back, feed drone data to the two Engel squadrons who had tracked them to this position, and flag hostile units for fire support. The ACXB organisms were the heavy hitters, even a comparatively light Species like the Aral, and they would be the ones who braved the defences, not the diminutive Dawns.

They just had to wait for their cue to act.

When light flared to the south, a fireball rising up into the higher atmosphere right on schedule, they had that signal. All across the base, hidden chutes slammed open, as the Migou scrambled their air forces in response to such an action, hostile emwar and sensor systems flicking to active.

All they managed was to pinpoint their own location, as the Engels' support drones emptied their racks of missiles at the Dawn-designated targets, while the armoured monsters began their own attack, plasma beams cutting through the armoured structures and seeking out the Loyalist defenders.

And all across the Eastern Front, this kind of scene repeated itself countless times. The forces of the New Earth Government had just happened to be in the right position to take advantage of the fact that the Migou were moving their own reinforcements to deal with the Harbinger threat, to attack the weakened lines, and Reclaim their own planet.

Almost as it had been planned.

* * *

~'/|\' ~

* * *

The visible blast should have been near-perfectly hemispherical; a three kilometre wide fireball enveloping the monstrosity. That was not the case. The AT-Field of the hostile lasted just enough for a notable asymmetry to shape the effects, before it evaporated like ice in the height of summer. Instead of a dome, it formed an inverted skirt, a toroidal shape with the Harbinger at the centre before the AT-Field broke and the nuclear fire washed over it.

[Anomalous blast formation detected.], reported an LAI.

"Brace for impact!" the Major screamed into the communications link, as the visible distortion of the blast wave propagated outwards, tearing rock and shredding canyons alike. She tugged on her jumpbelt, and hoped that the oddness the LAIs had flagged wouldn't ruin everything. The sudden shriek of the Gieger counter was her companion, as the technicians and LAI systems babbled their reports.

Shinji jumped backwards in his seat, the urge of his reflexes too much, at the sudden burst of light. A normal radiance, he noted; no trace of the Colour, for which he was thankful. Resettling, he squeezed the controls tight, behind the vast metal blast shield they had placed him. The Evangelion was fastened down, and the shield took the worst of the blast, but he was still buffeted by the gales, the pressure wave making the metal scream from overpressure.

Upwards, the twisted blast bloomed, punching through the dark dome that the Harbinger bore with it, and leaving a fracture of warped angles and colours unseen by mortal man propagating across the night. The strange, unfamiliar stars flared in intensity and shifted, as if they had only appeared as such from a certain angle, and the sudden shift in perspective given by the blast was restoring their true form.

[Do not engage until effects can be observed.]

It was fifteen long seconds from the detonation until the fireball had faded enough for Harbinger-5 to be visible, in the still-lit cloud that now blossomed around it towards the sky.

Once it had been an object of unnaturally precise geometry, its ten, kite-shaped faces perfect and immutable. Once, but no more. The near-contact detonation had slagged it in the same way that a golden idol might be melted when thrown into a blast furnace. Its bottom had run like wax where it had not simply evaporated, fronds and tendrils of liquid crystal forming a funereal veil for the object. The top had fared better, but only comparatively. Even as the light around it dimmed, the nearest face cracked with a thunderous screech; shattering like suddenly-cooled glass. It no longer stood vertically, but now leaned, its axis no longer sidereal in inclination.

[Target remains operational. Begin Phase Two.]

Above the horizon, and up from wide boreshafts, appeared the Atlantic Reserve Fleet, each firing as soon as possible. Even before the light from the nuclear blast had faded, and as a twisted aura borealis rippled in unnatural light in the black dome, the stellar intensity of plasma weaponry, and the green afterglow of charge beams bought further light to the night. Each impact, though they might have been able to core an enemy ship, only gouged a small wound into the crystal or left another section warped, but the cumulative effects were lethal to the Harbinger, which appeared stunned, floating lopsided, without retaliation or its own AT-Field.

The swarms of drones and planes which were launched only added to the damage, wave after wave of missiles impacting in the unnatural light of the Colour.

With a series of muffled explosions, the blast shields in front of Unit 01 and Unit 00 broke apart, the sections protecting their vulnerable weaponry falling forwards. Rei was already firing, methodically placing vECF shells into the precise centre of the foe, the flare of the arcanochromatic weapons nothing compared to the twisted stars above. Shinji took a deep breath of LCL, and, arms _no, it it's the Evangelion's arms_ sluggish due to reduced power, shifted the charge beam around to the precise location his LITAN requested. The Harbinger was so small from this distance, and the smallest movement moved the aim point so much, but slowly he guided the reticule into place.

In the core of the weapon, the central core of the 'shell' of ultradense hydrogen was suddenly ripped apart. A sudden series of magnetic spasms sent the protons forth at relativistic velocities, denuded of their neutralising electrons and constrained by an arcanomagnetic field, into the world to seek out their destiny. The electrons arced forth into the clouds of coolant that now surrounded the Unit, lighting the white fog in electric blue, but that had been taken account of in the firing solution, along with other things, such as the Earth's magnetic field, its gravitational effect, the other such weapons in use, and the Coriolis effect.

Until they _bent_ around their target. Along with everything else which was being thrown at it. Around the darkness of the maimed god was a shimmering, iridescent oil-slick of an AT-Field, diverting all attacks around the foe, without letting any near its sacrosanct body.

"Cease fire!" ordered Misato, suddenly afraid.

"Something's happening!"

"The Shaws are going crazy!"

"Unrecognised energy build-up in target!"

An unnaturally pure note sounded out, a sound not entirely unlike a finger on a wine-glass, shifting and modulating as it jumped through the spectrum at random. And then the Harbinger tore itself apart.

"Is... it dead?" Ritsuko mouthed.

It was not dead. It was merely... changed. With an indescribable din, the dome shattered, suddenly solid crystal, rather than a zone of transition. And each piece, a diminutive version of the intact Harbinger, flowed inwards, to form a shell around their progenitor. Or, maybe, around their self. Were they children, a weapon of their parent, or were they merely an extension of the will of Mot? Was there really a difference?

That was no reason to stop firing, and these lesser construct were so fallible, so weak. The lesser missiles of the bombers were enough to shatter one, sending void-dark crystal shattering to reflect the war above them, and the capital grade weapons punched right through.

A critical point was reached, though, and suddenly the protective shell disintegrated. No, that wasn't the right word. _Was absorbed_ would be more accurate, except even that wasn't true. What could be said was that the Harbinger was not restored to its former glory. It was not restored for, now, around it at each face, floated a lesser version of itself. And zooming in further, each orbital had ten orbitals itself. And one could look in further, and further, and further; layer upon layer, shell upon shell upon shell. If there was a final layer, the NEG could not see it in the fractal cloud of trapezohedrons that enveloped, that _was_ the Harbinger.

[Target appears to have regenerated all damage. Target is emitting large numbers of high energy electrons.]

"We nuked it, it's already regenerated, and now it's radioactive?" Misato muttered in disbelief. "That's just not fair." Then her training took over. "Shinji, Rei! Get out of its..."

Whatever else she was about to say was lost in the noise. The dreadful, terrible noise, which screamed through the world like the cry of a penangal. It was a noise which ceased to be noise, and started to be a shock-wave, which buffeted everything and tore its way through the landscape. And it was not the attack.

It was merely the herald of their destruction.

Aircraft died. Escorts died. Capital ships died. Hills died. Mountains died. The white radiance of the beams which Harbinger-5 loosed upon its foes touched everything that it could see, and it had so many more faces from which to fire.

Moving even before the sound was released, Unit 00 threw itself back, over a cliff face, and fell, the shattering noise of its armour plates and the ice at the bottom of the canyon muted by the cry of the Habringer.

Unit 01 was not so luckily, as tens of beams from the lesser trapezohedrons bracketed it, dancing across its surface.

Shinji screamed, and Unit 01 screamed with him, the armour melting and burning into the unnatural flesh of the Evangelion even as one of the horrific beams tore through his lower gut and out the other side. The Evangelion screamed, the scream of a dying god even as it pawed and clawed at its armour, trying to tear off the sheets of ceramic that went far beyond the white-hot, so hot that they were invisible. The radiance of the AT-Field that shimmered over the wounds was the only thing keeping the Evangelion together, and compared to the terrible brightness of the beams, it was dim.

"Eject!" Misato barked, her face horrified, as the screens ran down the communications cable. "Get him out of there, before it destroys the Eva!"

**[OVERRULED** was the LITAN's response, from inside the Unit 01. [Exterior environment will be lethal to the pilot.]

The Major swallowed, still hearing the screams. They were painful to listen to; how bad must they to be to experience? But the LITAN was right, prioritising pilot... Shinji's safety like that.

"Engage morale filters," she ordered, gritting her teeth, as LAI systems removed the screens from the audio feed. Biting her lip, she felt the coppery taste of blood, and winced in pain. "I want a barrage at this point!" she ordered, bringing up an AR display in her Eyes, and marking the location at the bottom of the elevated position. "Use vECF warheads, and I want it collapsed. Understood? Override proximity warnings!"

"What... sorry, yes. Requesting authorisation code." It was given. "Understood."

The barrage of missiles, arcing up and over from one of the fire positions, was partially intercepted by the Harbinger, but the thud and flash of Colour of the compact warheads that got through were enough to collapse the hillside, in a pile of rubble and dust and ice. For just a few moments, ghostly white beams shone through the clouds, and it rained black crystal and molten rock alike, before they vanished. And soon, the Harbinger was quiet, as it resumed its passage.

For a moment, there was silence in the command vehicle; the silence of the survivor.

"We... we have a signal from Unit 00," one of the technician managed.

"I am alive," Rei's cold voice stated. "Unit 00 has suffered damage to its dermal plates, but will be operational once I am given power again."

"Unit 01!" Misato yelled. "What happened to Unit 01?"

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Pain. It hurt. _He_ hurt all over.

There was a buzz of voices in the background. Everything... it looked so red. Redder than normal; hexagons and bars and shapes of crimson flashing across his vision. There was text of some sort, too, but it was blurred and out of focus, unreadable.

"Shinji, Shinji!"

[Test Pilot Ikari has been incapacitated. _**Autonomous Survival Mode**_ _engaged_. Weapons and systems remain operational and autotargetting, until motive force is recovered through synchronisation. **WARNING!** Critical damage incurred. **WARNING!** Low power! Back-up batteries engaged to supplement power flow.]

"No! Get the LITAN to stand down!"

It was funny, really. They'd mentioned that the LITAN would keep firing even if he fell; it couldn't use the held-weapons, but it would do what it could to keep the Unit safe, even if it couldn't move. It was very advanced; a wonder of automation and AI design. They'd gone all that length to get it to do that, but that _thing_ that the Evangelion had done in that first fight, had terrified them all. It had terrified him, because, in a sense, it had him doing it. It still gave him nightmares.

This pain-filled, red-lit world he found himself in, that feeling of another body barely there... it was better than going berserk.

"It's... yes, it's accepting the codes!"

**[Power levels critical.]** There was a fractional pause, before the LAI network spoke again. ['_**Play Dead' Mode**_ _engaged_. Unit 01 will deactivate all systems beyond life support and central control, until stable synchronisation is resumed or the Unit is salvaged.]

There was a small shift in the LCL, which produced a sagging, sinking feeling in the pit of the boy's stomach.

"Prepare for possible use of Option Zero."

"Ouranos, medical report! Try to stabilise him, until we can recover the plug!"

It hurt all over. And inside Shinji Ikari's head, hate and exhaustion fought. It had just... he swallowed a mouthful of LCL, or at least tried; he couldn't seem to be able to force it down, and gagged. Teeth gritted, he tried to force the Unit to stand.

And failed, because the Evangelion was locked down. Unseen tears running down his face, he whimpered incoherently.

[**WARNING!** Pilot is has severe sympathetic burns. **WARNING!** Pilot's animaneural waveform is breaking down. Contamination detected in the three primary components of the waveform] The voice was getting softer. [**WARNING!** Vital signs fading. Cardiac rhythm destabilising...

He could no longer hear the mechanical, male voice of the LITAN. It was good. No-one was telling him what to do anymore. He could just rest. He was tired. So very tired. Something punched him in the chest, hard, but he was just too exhausted to do anything. To move, to try to get away from it, to even scream any more.

Shinji Ikari closed his eyes. He had already stopped breathing a while ago.

* * *

~'/|\'~


	12. Chapter 11:Rei 02, In Water and Darkness

**Chapter 11**

**Rei 02, In Water And Darkness / some words she spake, in solemn tenor and deep organ tune**

**EVANGELION**

~'/|\'~

_Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. _

Immanuel Kant  
"Critique of Pure Reason"

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

A heartbeat.

Just one lonely heartbeat.

Then silence again.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"At 07:25:00, Synchronised Military Time, Operation Ankou began with the initiation of a Mixcoatal-class 12 MT pure fusion device, buried at a depth of two metres, directly beneath Harbinger-5. Contrary to our best estimates, the AT-Field of the hostile was _not_, I repeat, was not immediately nullified, and thus destruction was not total. With recourse to the footage from Evangelion Unit 00, the closest friendly unit to transmit such data, we can see that the core-equivalent was not exposed by the blast, although the Harbinger suffered major damage."

On the screen, the succession of slides tracked the progression of the blast, as the malformed toroidal plasma propagated upwards, until Mot's AT-Field gave way, and the image was lost. In the corner, an extrapolated diagram showed the damage inflicted to the crystalline structure of the Harbinger.

"Nevertheless, Operation Ankou continued. As soon as valid firing solutions could be ascertained, local forces, with the addition of the North Atlantic Reserve Fleet, the battleships _Romulus_, _New Mubai_, and _Stefugladisi_, and the Titan-Class ACXB combat organisms, Evangelion Units 00 and 01, began the next phase."

The projection flicked between autocensored images of the combat, and wireframe models covered in data readouts and estimated figures. Misato was reading the pre-prepared speech from the notes she had uploaded to her Eyes although Ritsuko had modified her first draft with additional technical details.

It showed.

"The damage inflicted on the Harbinger was light on a per-shot level. The crystal structure of the entity is estimated to be between twenty-five and a hundred and twenty five times more resilient to kinetic impact than the outer structure of a Migou _Synergy_-class battlecruiser, the toughest vessel we have managed to kill, and that is before its regenerative capacities, or the solid nature of it, are taken into account. The MAGI have noted that it took increased damage from arcanochromatic weaponry, compared to a conventional device of the same yield, and so recommend that all weapons which can be enhanced in that way are so."

The woman licked her lips, as the screen changed to the trajectory of Unit 01's charge beam shot.

"Fifty three seconds after the initiation of the operation, and thirty-eight seconds after the fireball had dissipated enough for visual contact with the entity to be re-established, Harbinger-5 responded. It amplified its AT-Field, to the extent that space-like paths around the target were visibly warped even before they contacted the discrete phase-space. This phenomenon was not displayed by Harbingers-1, -3, or -4, although the MAGI have noted similarities to the "wave" form of Harbinger-3, from the Shaw readings. It then began a process which ended with the reintegration of the dome of darkness into itself, and its regeneration into some kind of fractal thing."

Casualty figures began to flash up.

"It then destroyed the Atlantic Reserve Fleet. _Romulus_, _New Mubai_, and _Stefugladisi_ were lost with all hands. Evangelion Unit 01 took extreme damage, which left it combat-incapable; it en-route to Ostberlin-2 for emergency medical treatment for the pilot and repairs. Unit 00 took minor damage in the process of evading the hostile. It remains combat-ready, and is currently being moved ahead of the hostile's path for a second intercept attempt."

Misato swallowed hard, and hated herself for being here.

"Operation Ankou can thus be deemed to have been a failure."

She hated herself for being in this conference chamber, giving a report which could have been given by a damned _LAI_, let alone a subordinate, answering questions about things that the questioners already knew the answers. She was here while it was Ritsuko, and the team of sorcerers and doctors that she'd bought with her, who were going to be with Shinji. It just didn't seem right.

But rightness didn't matter. She was the Director of Operations, and there were operations she needed to direct. She couldn't allow herself to feel; she needed to think.

Even if she did feel.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

He was floating in darkness. No sound, no sight. He could feel the fluid around him, chilling him to the bone.

And, despite the blindness, despite the sense that there is not only no sound, but there is no _way_ that there can be sound, he saw that there are others in here with him in this darkness.

And they called to him. In total silence, and utter darkness, the figures called to him.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The endless hours of waiting had ticked by in Chicago-2, and it had long since passed that subtle point where 'late' because 'early'. But the reddish-blond haired girl, who stood in the engineering control centre, staring over at the figure of her Evangelion attached to the transport, was wide awake. Wide awake, and getting very frustrated.

"Have they given us permission to move?" she snapped at the Deputy Director of Operations, the hints of tiredness only amplifying her boredom and annoyance. "One Evangelion is down, and the Prototype isn't good enough. Can't they see that they need me?" Some might have said that the catch in her voice was desperation.

"Still no chance," Captain Martello said with a shrug that she felt was far too light-hearted for the scenario. "Hasn't changed. The Migou have moved more than enough interdiction squadrons to the Atlantic that we can't sneak by, and NorAmCom can't spare the ships to make sure we'd get through... and we'd be too slow, too, if we had a proper battleship and carrier escort."

Asuka gritted her teeth. She intellectually knew that he was right, that the cold logic of logistics was irrefutable, but this sensation of uselessness; she _hated_ it. She was being kept here, being wasted, because other people hadn't been _competent_. Especially when it could have been so different; if they'd kept her in Ostberlin-2, rather than moving her straight on to Chicago-2, if they'd dispatched her as soon as the warnings sounded, if the Migou hadn't moved those forces to the Atlantic...

Millions could die because she hadn't been used to her full potential.

Ten thousand could-have-beens filled the girl's head, as she settled back down on her kitbag, over in the corner, waiting for an order which refused to come.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"_Mama?"_

_The voice is far above him, distant. "Oh dear," it says, sounding somewhat maternal. "He __hasn't..."_

_"No," says a deeper voice. "He hasn't grasped that she's... well, you know."_

_"And his father?" A second woman._

_"He... can't be here." The deeper voice sounds uncomfortable. "He..." the two shadows far above lean together, and there is distant whispering. He doesn't pay any attention to it; he's too busy clinging to the suitcase they handed him, when they took him away from his home._

_He hopes this holiday will be short. He doesn't want to be away from Mummy and Daddy for too long._

_"Oh. I see," the second woman says, her tone leaden. "That's not good. Oh no. I hope... well, he'll have to, right?"_

_The first merely shakes her head, and squats down to give him a too tight hug. He squirms to get free, and fails._

_And then the tears come._

No. That wasn't it.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The low-flying cargo planes that tore through the early dawn sky were flying heavy, their vast, delta-shaped hulls crammed with equipment. On board, in the more-cramped-than-usual passenger space, a hastily set-up AR-dataspace was allowing the passengers to work. The cabin was more cramped than it should have been, because almost a third of the space had been commandeered in the name of sorcery, and the preparations for what they were about to do.

Ritsuko, paper robe tied tight over fresh pink skin, shivered in the slight chill that was present even in the sealed preparation hab, and wished that she hadn't neglected her normal daily routine in the preparations for the Unit 00 start-up test, which was making this more uncomfortable than it should have been. She shook her head. _That had been stupid_, she thought, as she resumed her revision of the role in the procedure that she would be fulfilling.

"Rits?" the voice came over her implants, along with the attendant face in her harcontacts.

"Yes, Sarany?" she asked the head of the Unit 01 team who, damn her, was getting to sit in the warm. "Have you checked everything? Will it work?"

"Mmmhmm," the woman replied, her tone somehow managing to sound perpetually gloomy. "Yes. It won't be perfect, but, yes. Although... I do have to say, it might be better here than it would be back in L2. We depleted most of our stocks of parts after Harbinger-4. 'Least the 02 team left an entire set of Type-B-2 spares back in Ostbe Two, which is more than I can say for us."

Ritsuko nodded, biting on her lip, despite the fact that the other woman couldn't actually see her. "That's... well, it matched the inventory records, but I wanted a proper analysis. Thank you."

"I can't work miracles," the _nazzady_ remarked. "We may have parts, but they're B-2s, not B-1s. They won't fit quite perfectly. And that's nothing to say of the tissue damage. Spare parts won't fix the hole in Oh-One's chest. Or the tissue trauma. And we're going to have to fish the crystal bits out of the Ackersby, before o-necrosis sets in, and..."

"It doesn't have to be perfect," Ritsuko said, trying to keep her voice calm. "It just has to be _enough_ to get it operational." She cut the line.

The interior door of the sealed unit opened, and a round-faced man left, rubbing his right arm slightly. He stopped, as soon as he noticed Ritsuko's glance, and frowned at her slight smirk. "Damn injections," he muttered.

"Look, it's necessary, Wei" the blond replied wearily. "We'll need boosters for this... and you're not telling me that you'd prefer to be out for a week instead?"

"I know _that_," he paused, "and I know we're just choiring; you're primary in this." He shifted uneasily, his paper robe falling open to reveal a surprisingly honed body. "It's just... I guess I'm just too much of an old-school Horakian. Bet the students nowadays don't have to learn to cast without implants first."

Ritsuko sniffed. "No, they don't. And the lack of tissue trauma is a wonderful thing," she remarked.

"Quite." The Chinese man rolled his eyes. "So, for this, we'll be using a trimetric Eidesis-type feeder-channel to handle the _ruach_ flows?" he asked, tone suddenly becoming serious.

The woman nodded, her view of his lean body entirely obscured by the diagrams displayed in front of her eyes. "Yes. The MAGI have sent the verification signal for the double-Czech to be used; the astronomical correspondences are such that we can also throw in a Yun-purity ward, and that should make Stage-6 considerably easier on us all."

"I love full moons... or close enough that you can account for it in the rite," Wei smiled. "And the _Verstärker_-support choir?"

"They've got one set up in the Herkunft Group facility in Ostberlin-2; the Representative pulled some strings and we're going to be allowed to borrow it. I've checked... you, Dalton, Esmin and Afrir are all compatible with it."

He winced. "That will mean more injections when we get there, won't it?"

"Yes, it will." She shook her head. "I don't know why you don't get an autoinjector, you know. Makes everything a lot less painful."

"Same reason I don't upgrade my implants, or get Eyes, or anything like that." Wei narrowed his eyes. "I've made that clear to you before."

Ritsuko nodded, hand unconsciously going to her back, where long-unused spinal ports rubbed against the thin material of the paper gown. "I know. I'm sorry." Her thoughts flickered to the thing that they had in the hold, that none of the other sorcerers or the engineers knew about. "And do up your robe, for goodness sake," she added, pointedly.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

It was getting cold in the darkness, cold in the water that enveloped and surrounded him. His lungs screamed to breath, but they were useless, motionless.

And yet he did not drown. He sunk ever deeper into the black without ever succumbing to it.

Lungs filled with fluid, he remained conscious, aware, and yet immobile.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"What do you mean, you refuse to fully unlock the strategic arsenal!" the Vice-Admiral protested, his face reddening. "It took 12 megatonnes, point-blank! I hardly think we can fight this... this _thing_ with piddly little tactical weapons!"

Misato quite agreed with him. He may have been an annoyance at the previous meeting, but in this case, both she and him were of one mind. Now, if he'd listened to her in the first place and they'd hit the Harbinger _before_ it had passed the frontlines... well, that was past, now. And in retrospect, he had had a point. They were losing territory all across the Eastern front, but the losses were being minimised. Either way, the point was that he was right, now.

Others disagreed.

"That's exactly what I mean," said the President of the NEG, her eyes narrowed. "I am not going to let you throw around megatonne arcanochromatic weaponry. Conventional nuclear weapons, yes. But... I've been briefed on the risk that the Migou will take the use of such things as an excuse to start strategic orbital bombardment." Her eyes flicked down for a moment. "And it's too high to allow it. We're walking a too-fine line here. Far too fine to allow that to happen."

"Not to mention the risk of a Colour-stable mass forming," added an advisor. "We don't want another Berlin-2 Aftermath." She shook her head, sadly. "Never again."

"Yes, that too." The President pursed her lips. "And Berlin-2 was contained. This... this wouldn't be."

The olive-skinned Vice Admiral grimaced, his image in the conference replicating the expression to the last detail. "But we saw that the Mixcoatal-class broke the AT-Field, but failed to kill it! We know we can get through, but it's upped the defences, with the new fractal structure. And, no, we can't just use larger conventional nuclear weapons from a distance," he added, in an aggrieved tone, "because they're A-Pod propelled!"

"Then bury them," said the Minister of War, leaning forwards in her own window. "You used the nuke as a mine for the first attack; why not do it again?"

A man cleared his throat. "It's not that simple, ma'am," advised a _nazzada_ in a dark grey uniform. "Deployment of strategic weapons is based around the assumption that they will be launched. Their placement is such as to minimise the chance that they'll be detected at launch, which is the most risky time for a warhead, because that's when they're optimised for speed, rather than the stealthed final approach."

There was silence, as people waited for the man from Strategic Missile Command to explain.

"So the majority of strategic launch sites are in Africa or South America; safe territory, not the frontlines of Europe and North America. There are plenty of tactical sites, but we won't physically be able to move any launch-capable warhead into place for use as a mine. Even if we could convert them from Lauch-Type to Mine-Type in the time we have, which is unlikely. And the self-destructs for key strategic locations are designed exactly so you, or a hostile, can't move them easily." He cleared his throat again. "To put it simply... the time for that has passed. Current tactics are based around the deployment of nought point one-to-fifty kilotonne ordinance at a tactical to low-level strategic level. Against almost everything, use of megatonne weapons is overkill."

"Well, look. One of the things not covered by 'almost'," snapped the Vice Admiral. "Your job was to foresee exactly this kind of problem. That you didn't do so shows a lack of the proper planning from the Strategic Missile Command. I do hope you're properly prepared should something happen with, say, _Harbinger-2!_"

And, again, Misato couldn't help but agree. The entire point of technical aides was to sit back, only to interject with large amounts of relevant data, but that didn't make specialists like this any less annoying from the point of view of the people who were actually making the decisions. Mentally, she shrugged. Maybe it was just her. Maybe people who were in these high level military meetings through rank, rather than technically being a kind of aide herself, were trained to deal with smug specialists. But, still, shouldn't the people behind the deployment of strategic weaponry have been prepared for the possibility that a Harbinger-level threat might require multiple such weapons to kill them? If they'd done it properly, she wouldn't have to order two teenagers to fight against something that they didn't have the weapons to kill.

"Ahem!" President Nyanda cleared her throat. "Vice Admiral Lípez! If we can avoid the acrimony..."

"Sorry, ma'am. In that case, we will have to consider what other options we have available to us, if we cannot," the man gave a bitter chuckle, "rely on high-yield weaponry."

Misato shuddered, overtly. Of all the people in the conference, she had the one who'd been closest to the actual failed operation; still safely over the horizon, but they'd been getting the feed from Units 00 and 01. That moment when the light of the newborn sun had washed into the AT-Field, and been rebuffed was going to haunt her.

The discussion resumed. But Major Katsuragi was distracted. There was now something squatting in the back of her mind, and on the tip of her tongue; something which she knew she had already subconsciously noticed, but which had not breached the waters of her awareness.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Shinji Ikari sat alone on a cold, barren landscape, hugging his knees, the chill wind piercing him to the bone. The air smelt vaguely like snow, with that almost-metallic taste, but the clear blue sky reached from horizon to horizon. It seemed so dead. The world seemed all too hollow, like it was painted on the sky. It was almost as if he could reach down, and pull the skin of bare earth and rock from the corpus of the world.

And above him, the birds sang. The tumultuous, swirling flocks of birds, all species and breeds flowing like water, writing words that he could not read in their flight. The chaotic, meaninglessly meaningful birds, free and wild and unconstrained, exulting in flight. The land may have been dead, but the sky was alive.

"You're scared of freedom," a young boy said, from somewhere behind him.

"I'm scared of being dead," Shinji objected. "And of being hurt. Also, of Harbingers, monsters, the Migou..."

"... your father."

"Yes!" Shinji swallowed. "No. I don't know!"

"Are you scared of me?" a cold voice said, from in front of him.

He looked up to meet a pair of cold grey eyes. _Yes!_, he wanted to say. "Sort of," was what he actually admitted.

"To you I am an object of fear," Rei said.

"You are very scared. Of the world. Of everything," the young boy said.

"Why shouldn't I be?" Shinji protested, turning to stare at his younger self. "Why not?"

"We are small, in a too-large world."

"Yes!"

"We are warm, in a too-cold world."

"Yes!"

"We are sane, in a too-mad world."

"Yes!"

And that was when the young girl behind him spoke, a piping, yet familiar voice.

"Why do you believe that to be true?"

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Major Katsuragi sat back in the chair behind the desk she had commandeered. A glance down at the map before her showed the progression of Unit 00, as teams of workers scurried across its surface to fill in the cracks in the outer armour with memomorphic foam. Idly, her finger traced its way across the map, unconsciously doodling on the image of the new form of the Harbinger. Looking up, she stared at the milk-white girl who stood before her, posture rigid, still-wet hair hanging limp down to her shoulders. The utter passivity of that figure was made worse by the dead look in eyes which seemed to state that she could wait forever.

But she had to be the Major now, rather than Misato; she had to be professional.

"Okay, Rei," the woman said. "I know that your Evangelion was damaged when you did what you had to do to stop the Harbinger from targeting you..."

"I am physically fine," the girl stated. "I cut synchronisation before I impacted with the ground."

The Major was fully aware of this, but nodded nonetheless. "Yes. And compared to Unit 01... well, that's why we're deploying you again. We need to slow it down; we need more time. I know you might not want to go up against it again, as you saw what Mot did to both Sh... to Unit 01 and the Fleet, but we don't have a choice if we want to prevent it from getting through."

"Yes."

"Once the field-modifications are complete, Unit 00 is basically going to end up being used as a SRBM-launch platform. I'm sorry, but... well, we don't have much of an option. You know about the reduced profile that the Evas can possess, if we run you off batteries? Well..."

"Yes."

The Major blinked, as her rhetorical question was answered, and her flow interrupted. "Yes, well, that means you're the largest unit that can carry the old-style fuel-propelled rockets, as the hostile can 'see' conventional missiles, and the ships that they'd normally launch from are too big targets." She paused. "And we've got a bit of luck, too," she added, jabbing one finger onto her desk as a smile crept across her lips. "After that change it did, from the dome to the smaller-crystals, it seems to be blinder. It's ignoring our drones and planes at extreme-long range, when it used to target them as soon as it could see them. The change... well," she shrugged. "Maybe it could only see in the dark. We don't know, but this works for us."

"Yes."

"Your task will be to shadow the target, and move to pre-determined locations for launches." Leaning forwards, the black-haired woman stared at her subordinate and charge, looking for any reaction at all. "Do you have any questions?"

"You are concerned about Test Pilot Ikari," the pale-skinned girl said, tilting her head slightly. "You are afraid that it is harming your capacity to make rational decisions."

A gasp of breath escaped from Misato's lips, before the Major managed to get a hold of herself. "I am worried, yes," she admitted, pursing her lips slightly. "However, the tactics are sound." _And that wasn't actually a question,_ she added, mentally. She waited, to see if that prompted any response from the _sidocy_, before a sudden thought struck her. "Are you worried?" she asked, a hint of curiosity in her voice.

"Do not worry," Rei said, face emotionless. "He is only clinically dead." There was a pause, just enough for the black-haired woman to take a breath to respond, before Rei added, "He will get better. I will follow your orders without reservation, Major. I have been instructed to do so."

"Good," the woman said, gaze flicking down to the desk in front of her to break that unceasing grey stare. And then her eyes widened, and she stared down at what she'd been idly doodling.

"Rei," she said, not looking up. "What does this look like to you? The drawing," she added, after a moment's thought.

"It resembles one of the training mnemonic-images used to aid Children in the shaping and generation of AT-Fields. But it is not accurate; if I or Test Pilot Ikari or Test Pilot Soryu attempted to use it as the basis, it would be weak and malformed."

"That doesn't matter," Misato said, sitting back, the corners of her lips twitching up. "That's what I thought. That looks a bit like the planar field image, though, doesn't it?"

"A bit."

The Major blinked. "Rei, report to your Unit for detailed briefing and plug insertion. I'm going to...no, Rits'll be busy," she said to herself. "LAI, get me a direct line to Representative Ikari!" she ordered the desk's intelligence.

[Yes, ma'am. Please hold.]

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Shinji Ikari."

The wind was colder. The sky was greyer. The plain was emptier, and he sat alone in the barren place.

"Welcome, child."

The voices were still there.

"Shinji Ikari."

"Welcome, Child."

"Shinji Ikari."

"Who are you?" he asked, shivering slightly.

"Who?

"Or what?"

"Or where?"

"Or when?"

"A-a-any would do," he suggested.

"And they would all be wrong," said the piping, too-familiar voice. "The question is always 'Why?'."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

In the near-darkness, the sickly sweet stench of rotting pomegranates was a grating sensation against the nose. There may have been other smells woven into the all-devouring odour; hot metal, cold iron, the chill smell of fresh snow and the reek of faecal matter, but, in truth, all was subservient to the sour sweetness.

"Floor Four is clear, no sign of any tangos, echoes, or hotels. Moving up to Floor Five."

And the sounds. There was still the faint hum from those computers which remained active, but that was a mere backing choir to the staccato drum of dripping fluid, and the strange harmonics that interlocked and sang, filling the space with unnaturally pure notes. The resonance hushed, a door on the far wall was slid open slightly, to reveal only more darkness beyond. But something passed through, eyes glinting in the light, its paws silent on the carpet of the office building, tail twitching. Its primary, organic eyes on biomechanical stalks scanned the area, as the chip in the cat's brain guided it to cover, before the stalks poked out.

"Okay... wow. Captain, Felix Alpha has a contact. Something on visual, something on IR, nothing on UV, something on T-ray, and CATSEYE is going _berserk_. I'm... trying... clearing the image."

There was something in the room. Something stepped and stacked, like a Mesopotamian pyramid, but on a vastly smaller scale. It was a pale shape in the emergency lighting, and oddly textured, almost scaled, but there was an inorganic rigidity of shape and form which made that not quite applicable.

And around it were bodies. Lots of bodies. Lots of _bits_ of lots of bodies.

The walls and floor and ceiling were not merely red due to the emergency lighting.

"Shit."

This was the sort of thing which was meant to happen in damp subbasements, in decadent boardrooms, or in doomed laboratories. Nice central points, full of narrative poignancy. This building even had examples of all three. Not in the corner of one of the office rooms, next to the toilets and the staircase. The mundanity which underlay the horror only made it worse. On a desk, partially subsumed by the sleek mass, was an overturned mug. The dark stains of the spilt coffee met and blended with the dark stain that had soaked into the seat and pooled on the floor, until the two were indistinguishable.

The mind paid attention to things like that. Not to the inorganically organic mound, or the dark-shape which seemed to float, like a solid shadow, above the peak, strange labelling and annotations glowing in the far ultraviolet around the tenebrous geometrical object.

It looked like technology. It looked like life. It looked wrong.

"Fall back!" barked Captain Joyeuse, at the head of the armoured figures who had been in position in the stairwell. Her brown eyes were wide under her helmet, staring at the image being streamed to her Eyes. "Fuck it, fall back! X-ray, X-ray, X-ray! We have an X-ray threat in here. Get me a line to Deputy Director Echo, immediately!" she snapped, at her armour's LAI, her oversized weapon raised towards the door in exoskeletal hands. "Get the fuck out here!"

Running was their only chance. The gun wouldn't do any good.

Not if that was what she thought it was.

In her Eyes, she watched as the cat-drone collapsed, its CATSEYE signal cutting out, along with its vitals. There was still a feed from the synthetic senses, though from the fibre optic cable. She stared in horror, trying not to fall down the stairs, as the remnants of the cat flowed, in a way which was not quite liquid mercury, and was not quite the decomposition of a long-dead corpse. The creeping mess, white lumps solidifying out of the organic viscosity, swept around the implants and cameras, and rolled up to the pyramid, digging their way into the superstructure, until it could not be seen that they had ever _not_ been there.

It was what she thought it was.

"Mile, you get that?" she muttered, swallowing a mouthful of bile, calling out to the man who had operating the drone, outside in the relative safety of an armoured car. Her feet clattered down the staircase, and the concrete protested at the mass of her combat exoskeleton, but it did not give. "Mile... you hear me?"

There was no response.

The grey-haired drone operator had his knuckle in his mouth, and was biting down, hard. The red blood on his hand and lips was a sharp contrast to his skin, and his breaths were shallow and fast. His pupils were tiny pinpricks in his blue irises.

"Gjorgji?" Junira asked, from beside him, grey eyes widening as he slipped off his headphones. "What's the matter? What are you doing?"

He only received a flurry of incoherent words, in a foreign language the _sidoca_ didn't understand or recognise.

"Hikara? Help! Something's up with..."

"Agent Mile," snapped Hikara, before he swallowed, and rested a hand on the older man's shoulder. "Sorry... Gjorgji. Listen to me. Relax." Slowly, he gestured for the White to be ready, if the older man was about to turn violent. It was never nice to have to use those hand gestures when dealing with a fellow officer, but sometimes too necessary, and Junira readied his stun baton. Then, movements careful and steady, Hikara reached out for the older man's hand, and eased it out of his mouth.

"Careful... careful... okay." The _nazzada_ took a breath. "Drone Operator Mile is incapacitated; I need an immediate transfer of his responsibilities, and a replacement to take up the slack. I..."

[Yes, Agent. Duties of Drone Operator Mile have been delegated.]

The man paused, as the LAI responded, then continued. "Junira... get the first aid kit. We'll want to get the hand done." He rested the back of his hand against the man's lined forehead. "No temperature or fever..."

"I'm f-f-fine," Gjorgji snapped, his stammer putting lie to his statement. At the glances from the other two, he winced. "Okay, I'm n-not _harangoja_ fine, okay. But," he clenched his fist, rhythmically, "it's not medical... well, it's psychological, rather than sickness." He glared. "And I could do without the crowd," he added, to the others who were starting to gather around. The newcomers' weapons were not raised, or even unholstered in many cases, but there was a definite implication in their posture that this could change.

Everyone was on edge after what had been found. But the problem, if one were to ask Gjorgji Mile, was that everyone was not on edge _enough_.

Shivering, arms clutched around himself, the man looked up at his immediate co-workers, and the other OIS agents who had gathered around in response to the silent alarm, and swallowed hard. "Look," he managed, his accent thickening. "Something really bad is happening. Not here. Well... here. But not just here. Something _big_ and _bad_ and..." He trailed off, taking a shuddering breath. "It'll be another Harbinger." He shivered violently, and jabbed a shaking finger at the monitors, "But... because that... the thing-thing in there? That's Budapest Syndrome. Trust me on this," he said, with a brittle certainty.

"Budapest Syndrome?" one of the newer agents asked, before being shushed by their partner. There was a sudden, new, feeling in the air; the static crackle of nervous tension.

"Budapest Syndrome," said Agent Runiry, with a leaden note in her voice. "Look... I'm not about to call you a liar or anything, but... are you sure?" The pleading note in her voice was obvious.

"I was in Budapest in '67," Gjorgji Mile said, simply.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The sky was starting to fade to black, as the light dimmed and the shadows lengthened. The grey and brown of the earth was covered in dark scribbling as the land caught the light and cast it into sharp contrast. In those parts where the cold sun still caught the land, there was the gleam of twilight on rising waters.

"Why, then?" Shinji asked, hugging his knees, as he shifted slightly.

The child giggled. "'Why?' isn't a question! Because there isn't an answer! There isn't a reason! None of this matters!"

"B-but you said..."

"'Why?' doesn't matter. Neither does what! Or who, or where, or anything! Nothing matters! The universe won't cry when you're gone, or when Earth has gone, or when the sun has gone! We're meaningless. We are all meaningless! And that is necessary."

Shinji took a shuddering breath, hands rubbing unconsciously up and down his biceps. It reminded him that he was real, that he could feel himself, that he was alive and aware and awake. And it did help against the cold, too. "I'm not listening," he muttered. "I matter. People matter."

Just giggles, in the silence

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Major Katsuragi."

Over the secure link, concealed behind the [VOICE ONLY] image, Gendo Ikari's voice was calm, emotionless; almost mechanical.

"Sir." Misato swallowed, and took a breath. "Have you examined the query I posed to the MAGI?"

"Yes." There was a pause, which seemed to stretch out uncomfortably long. "It was immediately flagged as a curiosity, and the Operators bought it to my attention." His eyes flicked along the read-outs on his glasses. "It is theoretically possible," he remarked, with a little more vitality in his voice.

"It is?" Misato asked, a little surprised at herself. A part of her hadn't been expecting for it to be a possibility; she had hoped so, but she had been running off gut instinct and logical deductions from what she had seen of this that she did not understand. It had probably been better that Ritsuko was still out of contact; that was exactly the sort of thing that the Director of Science would have rubbished, in her long experience of their association.

"We have a basis from the Second Child's tests on AT-Field manipulation," the sorcerer said. "The manifestation you enquired about can be produced through the superposition of other valid, simpler shapes." Gendo leant forwards in his chair, the gesture entirely unconscious. "Now, what is your request?"

The dark-haired woman tightened, her hands at ease behind her gripping each other tightly. "I believe we have a plan to be able to breach the Harbinger's AT-Field, and kill it. However, we will require authorisation from you, or another Representative to obtain the necessary resources. The key component comes from the Tonbogiri liaison group."

"Tonbogiri?" echoed Fuyutsuki, his name lighting up on her screen. "Isn't that the Navy liaison group that's experimenting with spaceti..."

"... to use a Huitzilopochtli-class weapon for space-combat. Yes, sir, the LANCE system." She paused. "And I've served as an observer for tests at Test 9, in the 0343 Facility... the one in Australia."

"Yes, we are aware of that," Fuyutsuki said. "The last test was that unsuccessful one on the 13th of September, wasn't it?"

"Yes, sir," the Major said, with a nod. "The warding was malformed for the primary charge; there was a successful initiation, but it failed to meet the necessary focal angle." This was where the complications emerged, and she would have to do some explaining. "And that's why I made the enquiry."

"Explain." The word was short, terse, perfunctory.

"There's a partially complete test weapon in Ostberlin-2... not ready for field deployment. It's still under construction; most of the physical parts are in place, but they're only half done on the needed sorcery. As it is, it won't work. But with reinforcement from an AT-Field, and the addition of one of the Harlequin devices that the Council of Representatives authorised us to use, it should be possible to jury-rig it for in-atmosphere use."

"Have you checked this with Dr Akagi?" asked Gendo, raising an eyebrow.

Of course she hadn't. The scientist was still busy with Shinji and Unit 01, and had sealed herself from contact, Misato thought, clamping down in her irritation. She suspected the man knew, too, and was just using this as a rhetorical device, to make sure that she had thought things through, rather than just running off gut instinct.

"No, sir. I did, however, get the Unit 02 science and engineering team to produce plans for the necessary set-up for both Oh-Two and Oh-Zero."

And, luckily, she _had_ been careful to make sure that such a thing was actually possible, from an engineering viewpoint before she bought it to the Representative. The only query had been about whether an AT-Field could actually do such a thing, and now she had such a confirmation. She relaxed slightly.

"However, your proposition is flawed," the younger of the two men stated. "Simply, Rei does not have the necessary synchronisation ratio nor fine AT-Field control to be able to form the required field. And Harbinger-5 will reach London-2 before Unit 02 can be physically moved, even if there was not a Migou interdiction deployment in the Atlantic."

The woman swallowed, and cringed slightly, inside. "Yes. I know." This was hard to say. "However, Unit 01 is being repaired using the Unit 02 components which were not moved when that Evangelion was. I have consulted with the repair team; the schematics will be cross-compatible. The Test Model and the Mass Production Model are fairly similar, anyway. Hence, if it proves necessary, and Shinji is physically capable of carrying out the operation. Unit 01 will be the primary actor."

She paused, to see if the boy's father would protest about the use of his own son, who was still clinically dead, as a key part of an operation.

"Continue, Major," the Representative said.

Evidently not.

"If he cannot, the secondary plan is for Rei to conduct an extreme close-range initiation, to compensate for the loss of focus. That will require a nearly point-blank detonation, and the MAGI only give a six plus-or-minus five percent chance that... Unit 00 will remain intact after such an option. The tertiary plan, should Unit 00 be rendered inoperative in current operations, is for an unconstrained mine-like blast; however, the MAGI estimate that such an attack will do approximately the same damage as Operation Ankou, and so will not kill the hostile in one shot." She blinked once. "The plans for Unit 02 are if we fail, and the hostile survives the detonation of the London-2 Rapture contingency. Assuming High Command cannot eliminate the Harbinger with strategic missiles, due to the hostile's point defence, Unit 02 will be with the counterattack force. They will seek to eliminate Harbinger-5 before it can target any other locations."

Gendo stared at her silently, the seconds ticking their endless path from future to past. "Permission granted," he stated at long last. "Carry on, Major Katsuragi."

"Yes, sir. I shall give the necessary orders." The Major saluted, and cut the link.

Back in the Representative's office, there was awkward silence. Slowly, Gendo removed his glasses, and pinched his brow, letting out a deep and heartfelt sigh.

"Harbinger-5 is both earlier and more powerful than we expected," Fuyutsuki said, in a voice which dripped of his seventy-two years. "This is... alarming."

"That's an understatement," the younger man muttered, as he snapped open his glasses case, cleaning the screens and the bridge with the cloth. The cleaned arglasses went back on, along with the mask.

"I note that Major Katsuragi did not give us the MAGI estimates for the primary operation," his former aide remarked.

"No. Because she was afraid that I would not approve if I knew that she was risking this on something the MAGI only gave a," he paused, "a nineteen, plus-or-minus three percent, chance of success without losses." He sat back, and cracked his knuckles. "Fuyutsuki, take over here. I am going down to Irkalla."

"You are?" Fuyutsuki asked, shock in his tone. "At a time like this? You know how..."

"Yes," Gendo said, calmly. "I know precisely how dangerous it is. But it will be necessary to tilt the odds in our favour."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The sun was gone, and the land was gone, and all that was left was the water and the squalling of the birds. The earth was without form, and darkness covered the rising depths. And, below the surface, eyes staring blankly, floated Shinji, his face a reflection of a pale moon which was not there.

The water was real, in a way that the paper-thin depth of the land had not been, he concluded. It filled his world. It _was_ his world; inchoate fluid hidden yet eternally present. And since it was always here, and it did not chance, he had no way of measuring time. He could not count his breaths, because he was not breathing. He could not listen to his heartbeats, because his heart did not beat. And the sequence of numbers that he tried to track in his head was tenuous and all too easily broken.

Just like he was. Just like he had been.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The giant's foot came down on the road like the wrath of a titan, fracturing aged tarmac under the pressure, before it pushed off again. The white shape of Unit 00, lit by the red light of the early morning, looked wounded, drenched in blood. This illusion was only made worse by the very real scars of repaired ceramic which criss-crossed its torso, but it was fully functional. Nestling in its vast hands was the blocky shape of a cruise-missile launch battery, torn off a damaged corvette, and the fact that such a weapon was but jury-rigged to be carried by an Evangelion was obvious. More examples of the same weapon, although this time from missile vehicles, were bolted into the back of the pale shape. Against a technological foe, such a load-out would have been ridiculous, prone to just one well-aimed shot from a hostile.

They were not up against such a foe.

Inside the entry plug, Rei Ayanami worked the control yokes, and the mnemonic device was enough to clarify her will to the Unit. The overlap integral displaying the synchronisation ratio was holding steady, in the low fifties, ticking and pulsing with near-random neural activity. Her grey eyes flicked repeatedly over the morass of displays that covered the inside of the Prototype's plug, always keeping her attention on the window that tracked the location of the Harbinger.

The floating leviathan was out of visible range, due to the morning mist, but its location was still marked as a wireframe shape from feeds from closer observers. The tiny black blot on her horizon, no longer as cleanly elegant as it once was thanks to the fractal iterations of lesser versions of itself, could once have swatted her from here. It did not now. The first attack had forced Mot to blind itself further to protect itself; in this strange, fixed cosmos, it could feel the tears in spacetime that dotted this planet, itself only painted to the Harbinger by gravitation, but the rifts seemed not to be the things that were directly attacking it. It was perplexed, and so had retreated its shade into itself, sacrificing comfort in this hostile set of physical laws for safety.

Objectively speaking, it had probably been the wrong choice.

With a slight lean to the side, Unit 00 stepped around a building, in which a pair of exosuited workers could be seen, checking manually that the locks on their missile vehicle were secure. One of them was staring at the Evangelion as it tore past, one hand raised to shield his optical sensors. Rei was aware that the watching woman's mouth was wide open at the sight of her Unit, shock at the sight of the forty-metre titan. She simply did not care.

And with a thought and a smooth pull on the controls, she came to a stop, carefully placing the cruise missile battery down on the reinforced section of road which had been designated for her. Her colossal hands were still precise enough to slot the system into the pre-prepared slot, control cables snaking back into her Unit's fingers like strings for a puppet. Which it was, in a real sense.

"LITAN, inform Operations Command that I am in position, and am awaiting further orders," she instructed the LAI system.

[Yes, Test Pilot Ayanami.]

[Evangelion Unit 00, Invidia, is in position], stated a system in the command centre as it received the message from the LITAN, adding another green marker to the network of nodes that was beginning to envelope the Harbinger's position on the map. [We have received a valid target confirmation signal.]

"Good," the Admiral muttered to himself, his red eyes glinting. "This is a limited engagement," he reminded his subcommanders. "We are not going to throw assets away. We can't spare them, not after the loss of the Reserve Fleet. We have objectives, and when we fulfil them, or find that we cannot, we will pull back. Understood."

The assent was near instant. No-one wanted to die, after all.

"Now, we wait," the _nazzada_ stated. "And may the Lord protect us," he added, softly, to himself.

Rei Ayanami watched, as the new dawn was soon tainted by the Colour. Braced on all fours, Evangelion concealed behind a hill, she felt the kick of the thrusters, as the first of the cruise missiles hastily mounted on her back launched, scorching the white paint with the fury of their chemical exhausts. All around her, the low-hanging mist was pierced by hundreds of torches, the thin cloud torn asunder by the passage of the bombardment. The crack of artillery pieces could also be heard, the useless, too-weak shells merely a cover for the bombardment cannons.

She waited. She could feel the vengeance of the Harbinger, trying to fight off a foe that was almost invisible to it. There was an explosion a kilometre to her left, as a hillside was devoured by the hungry lance of Mot, the shockwave buffeting Unit 00 and wiping away the last of the mist around her.

Rei did not flinch. She did not move. She merely waited.

And then the first Colour-full blast lit the area in phosphorescent, luminescent flame. And another one. And another one. Some of the kilotonnes of ordinance thrown at Harbinger-5 had escaped the defence put up by its lesser fractal protrusions into reality, and now this creature of dark crystal and eternal night warred against the influence of the Colour From Outer Space.

With a detonation, one of the ten lesser crystals tore itself apart in the heart of an arcanochromatic fireball, the void-dark crystal turning grey and brittle even as it spread itself across the landscape. Tilting, the arcane monstrosity shrieked in a perfect note like breaking glass, and the land began to pulse, as it fired at random, punching glass-bottomed craters a hundred metres wide into the landscape of Northern Europe.

[Evangelion Unit 00, retreat to Point Alpha-Foxtrot-Xray-Niner-Niner. Prepare for second barrage]

Silently, Rei nodded, and the Evangelion strode into life, snatching the Babylon placed for her. She was performing her role in the operation to maximum efficiency, and the limited operational goal, to slow the entity designated as Harbinger-5, was likewise successful. Blinded, the beast was not moving, and each second it did not move was a second that it did not move fifty metres. Moreover, that first wave had taken out one of its fractal subentities. The girl was aware that each loss ruined both its firing arcs, and its numerological significance.

But she held no illusions that this was killing it. This was fundamentally a delaying action, nothing more. It was not yet time for Harbinger-5 to die. Not yet.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

But after seconds, minutes, hours, days, years of darkness, there was light.

Blinding, painful light, burning light through his closed eyelids.

Something stabbed him in the chest, and he screamed in an impulsive, convulsive spasm, forcing fluid out of his lungs in an action which was not purely his own. His bleary eyes opened, and beheld a world of unfocussed colours which blurred and ran like dilute watercolours. There was a heavy presence on his chest, on his stomach, which bound his legs and restrained his head. Thrashing, he tried to move, and could not.

But it was a different kind of inability to move than the one which had overcome him in the dark waters of his mind. That had been passiveness, and a refusal of his mind to tell his muscles to move. This was active constraint, and he could feel the bands enveloping his arms.

Already exhausted from such little motion, he relaxed, his fingers curling up, only to feel the pads protecting the palm of his hand.

"Shinji Ikari." The voice over the intercom was distant and muffled, but familiar. And, unless his ears deceived him, more than a little weary itself. "Shinji. Can you hear me?"

[Response detected. Neural activity indicates consciousness.]

"Shinji?" the voice asked again, switching to Japanese, seemingly ignoring the mechanical voice. "Please, we need a response." Every muscle in his body screaming from fatigue, he forced his eyes to focus upon the washed out world around him.

"...oran...ge..." he groaned, registering for the first time the presence of the thick liquid that filled his lungs and enveloped his body. "So... ti...red."

On the other side of the transparent wall, Dr Akagi shrugged. "Well, technically that's a response," she muttered to herself. Reaching up, she wiped her sweat-slick brow on her sleeve, feeling her own muscles scream at her and the bruising localised around her implants in the soft tissue in her arms and legs. She was going to pay for this ritual in the morning, she could feel, and the medichines were going be an irritation for the next few days.

Shaking her head, she stared in at the boy, restrained in the LCL-filled tank, as the autodoc retracted its limbs. The preparatory black markings still covered his pale skin, and the intravenous cables snaked and wrapped around him like some kind of technological chrysalis. "Welcome back to the land of the living, Shinji Ikari," she said, softly. "We're not going to let you take the easy way out of this."

* * *

~'/|\'~


	13. Chapter 12: Rei 02, In Fire and Ashes

**Chapter 12**

**Rei 02, In Fire And Ashes / Some mourning words**

**EVANGELION

* * *

**

~'/|\'~

* * *

"_If thou openest not the gate to let me enter,  
I will break the door, I will wrench the lock,  
I will smash the door-posts, I will force the doors.  
I will bring up the dead to eat the living.  
And the dead will outnumber the living."_

Ishtar's Descent to the Underworld  
Babylonian Mythology

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The airlock deep in the bowls of the Geocity sealed itself shut, cutting off the painfully bright blue light from the containment chamber. With a sigh, Gendo Ikari relaxed slightly, and peeled the argoggles from his face, dropping them in the disposal bin. They were soon followed by his ear protectors, and the undyed cotton overall.

The man stood fully naked, eyes closed, as chill mist filled the chamber, thick and swirling and cloying, its scent washing away the odour of the place on the other side of the door. A thin, colourless condensation dripped from his warm body, and he shuddered. The call of instinct was too strong to resist; not when the coldness touched his flesh, rivulets running down over the thin white lines which crisscrossed his back and hands, and dripping in long, stringy drops from the uncapped socket points for the sorcerer's implants.

The sudden furnace heat was nothing compared to the chill, and the warm water that washed the now-dried micromachine gel off was positively pleasant by contrast. Spitting out a foul-tasting residue, he stepped through to the next decontamination chamber, snatching up the towel and dabbing at his eyes, sinking his face into the absorbent material, before he began to dry the rest of his body.

As Gendo dressed himself again, motions hurried, his eyes unconsciously avoided the transparent window on one side of the room where, on the other side of a one-way mirror, an opaque white box, corners smoothed to nanoscopic precision, was undergoing its own decontamination procedure.

'**703**' was all it said, in big black letters. That, and the Greek character 'α', a black symbol in the centre of a yellow circle. The warning for arcane materials.

Gendo Ikari had descended to Irkalla to obtain a way to tilt the odds in their favour. And this box, and its contents, was his weapon.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

It was the start of a brand new day for the students at the Academy, filled with fun and excitement. Even if they wished that it wasn't, especially when the 'fun' included an evacuation notice. The only mercy was that the school was deep enough down, that it, in itself, counted as a valid evacuation shelter, and so it was not necessary to move. This came with the attendant downside, however, that there were still going to be some lessons. The entire class was muted, with a considerable fraction deciding to use the tutor group period to catch up sleep.

"Come on," Hikary said, folding her arms and glaring around the class. "I know it's Thursday, but do you _all_ have to be like this?"

There was a mix of groans and vaguely assent-sounding noises from the subdued figures.

"Not my fault, Class Rep," Toja managed, voice a little muffled by the way his face was mashed into the desk. "I didn't get much sleep last night."

"How is that not your..."

"Face it, Hik," said Ayesha, with a shrug, "people just kinda suck."

There was a clatter as Beautriu, a tanned girl with short, mousy-brown hair, managed to trip over her own shoelaces, and send both her arglasses and her bag full of books spilling over the floor. There was applause, and even a few wolf-whistles, which were cut short when Hikary straightened up, and directed a glare around the room.

"Case in point," Ayesha added, smirking.

Hikary glanced at her fellow xenomix. "That wasn't where I was heading," she said. "I was just wondering why everyone seems so tired... more tired than normal for a Thursday, that is."

"Yes, well... doesn't make it not true," remarked the Student Council Representative. "People are lazy. I mean, I hate Thursdays too, but no more than any other day."

The pig-tailed girl shook her head. "It does make it not relevant. For one, you hate the world generally."

The other orange-eyed girl sighed, adjusting her headscarf slightly. "Because... I refer you to my first point. I _did_ stand for Council on a policy of jaded cynicism and misanthropy, after all, and I got in, so... meh." She shrugged. "And on that topic, you did get the minutes from the last meeting, right?"

"Yes." Hikary nodded. "I hope everyone will do their best, with the minimum of fuss. It shouldn't be too bad; the class play is usually quite popular."

"Class play?" someone asked from directly behind Hikary, panting slightly.

"Good morning, Taly," the Class Representative replied, flatly. "Yes, class play. You're late, by the way."

The other girl shrugged. "He's not here yet," she said, referring to the teacher, "so I'm not late."

"That's not how it works, and you know it."

"Plus, I have a totally valid reason. You know, there are evacuations everywhere. I don't know if you have been paying attention, but there are. And even before the notice came through, the central dome in Princechurch was sealed off completely, and there are delays all along the Ascension line. It's a mess trying to get down from higher in the city. Which, you know, you'd know if you weren't you."

Hikary narrowed her eyes. "Maybe," she said. "Now, Ayesha," she said, turning away from the girl with the dyed red streaks in her hair, "back on the topic... perhaps without any interruptions," she added, sweetly.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Dabbing carefully at her face with the wet towel, wincing every time the skin shifted over the bruising around her forearms and lower back, Ritsuko stared at herself in the mirror. She ran her tongue over dry, cracked lips, tasting blood.

"Self-inspection reveals epidermal haematomas on face, specifically over the cheeks and around the jaw." She winced again, as she added, voice rough, "Discomfort in talking, dry throat, sore eyes. Majority of tissue damage is located around grounding implants in soft-tissue, as expected. Self-examination complete. Now, will you let me out of here?"

[Medichine initial diagnosis is still in process. Please wait.]

"Sorry, Dr Akagi," added a Nazzadi-accented woman, the subtle inflections in her voice distinguishing her from the LAI, "but you know the rules. After a ritual of this magnitude, we _have_ to check for organ damage, and...

"There is something rather more important right now," Ritsuko said, her jaw locked. "So, forgive me if I..."

[Medichine initial diagnosis is still in process. Please wait.]

"Dr Akagi, you know the rules. We need to make sure that any bleedthrough aftereffects aren't going to kill you. So, please, wait while we wait for the medichines to provide a diagnosis."

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"Okay, it's coming in," the medical technician announced over the speakers. "Some minor internal bleeding..."

"Where?" The word was short, terse.

"Uh... liver, small intestine... grade 1."

"Nothing in anything immediately important, then?"

The _nazzady_ paused. "Uh... no. It'll be dealt with by the medichines, but you will need to take it easy for the next few hours, and you shouldn't be nanoscrubbed until they've sealed off the bleeding."

"Of course I plan to take it easy," Ritsuko lied. "Now..."

There was a faint sigh from the medical technician. "Just wait a moment, please." A container slid out from the wall, containing a white jumpsuit and attendant jacket. "We'll need to make sure that you're plugged into the monitoring gear in case of complications."

"Yes, yes," the blond snapped, already threading the cable out from the neck of the clothing to the port just under her left ear, before roughly pulling on the suit. "It's not like I haven't done this before. Now, can I..."

"Yes, I'm reactivating your data access rights. The sealed bag has..." the other woman noted that the scientist had already torn it open, to get to the equipment. "Yes," she sighed. Scientists were all the same, in her experience. Pure sorcerers tended to treat their bodies better.

"Right, so," Dr Akagi said to herself, as the initialisation text ran along the insides of her harcontacts. "Come on... come on, ah. Athena," she began, addressing her muse, "check mail. Filter for relevancy based on List 3."

[Yes, doctor. You have **149** new relevant messages.] the LAI said, formally.

Ritsuko blinked, heart suddenly racing. What had happened while she was out of contact? "Sort by urgency," she instructed the LAI, as she slipped on the plimsoll-like shoes provided. "Prioritise by relevance: subjects Evangelion, Harbinger-5, Ikari, Harbinger."

[**51** of **149** new messages are urgent, doctor.]

"What?" she blurted out loud. Pulling out a stylus from the bag, she began to flick down the list in front of her eyes, rapidly scanning the headers. The door unsealed, and, barely paying attention to what was going on, Ritsuko shuffled out. Pausing for a moment, she told her muse to bring up a route-line for her to follow to get to where the Unit 01 team was working, on the repairs, before resuming the reading that left her blind in one eye.

Her jaw dropped open at the sight of the annotated diagrams.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

All across Eastern Europe, the fires of conflict raged. All across Eastern Europe, the New Earth Government was being pushed back. The Migou had committed heavily to this front, and so the forces which tore into the human lines with ruthless efficiency were not the normal mix of Nazzadi Loyalists, backed up and honed by Migou units. No, these were pure Migou formations, filled with the technological horrors of the fungi from Yuggoth, interspersed by the Loyalist Elite, who were, in mind, more akin to their masters than to their genetic source.

A flash of light blinded the midday sun, as an antimatter warhead blew a glowing crater into the hillside, the direct hit crushing the NEG fortification dug into the geography like a tin can. The Migou fliers which had broken away just before launch returned, black knife-shapes tearing through the air and slashing at those human gunships which had survived the shockwave, the aircraft now denuded of their surface to air support. The sudden shift in the tactical situation was enough to allow the silent, ellipsoid shapes of the Migou heavy ground units, and their strange mecha, which approached the technoorganic aesthetic from the other side, to break through. Beams of relativistic plasma illuminated the contrails of worryingly smart missiles, as blasts reaped their way through the armoured units of humanity.

Second Lieutenant Salou Danda swore in his head, over and over again, and tried to crouch down further, to make his Dawn an even smaller target on this battlefield. Half his squadron was already KIA, and with the loss of the firebase, they certainly didn't have enough forces in this area to hold off. And without Lieutenant Santiago, they didn't have the drones, and so were blind... not that drones would be much use in this emwar environment, he thought, staring morosely at the haze on his passive radar. The clouds of interfering micromachines and nanomachines released by both sides were staining the air silver, replacing the ones destroyed by the blast, and high above, the sun was once more a blood-red disc, as if it was dusk, despite the fact that it was not even midday yet.

"Orders, sir?" It was Tirtzah, over the tightbeam laser.

The man took a single breath, and let it out, slowly. They had been forwards recon for the base; that was, obviously, now useless. Their EWAC aircraft and drones were down, so they were cut off, completely. They could try to retreat, but the emfog was dense enough that the damnable Migou sensors would have a worrying chance of seeing their stealthed mecha, just from the displacement patterns left in the clouds. It was one of the reasons that both sides used them, after all.

"We hold," he lased back. "Go Ghost-Niner, Lima-Lima."

"Roger."

It was that simple. Two Dawn-class reconnaissance mecha couldn't do much against the armoured legions of the Migou. Even if Tirtzah was the heavy weapons specialist, she only had one ACMRM left, and a one tonne-yield warhead was not enough. Not when there were Mantises out there, which weren't even always mission-killed by a close proximity blast.

But wait, wait and watch, while the emfog dispersed and settled to the ground like silvery snow, wait and track the Migou movements, and then try to re-establish contact, to report their findings? That was a worthy cause.

You didn't give up, and you didn't throw your life away. To do either, was to court extinction.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Evangelion Unit 01 was a titan covered in ants that swarmed and crawled across its surface; exosuited workers and autonomous drones alike replacing damaged external plating. The parts which had come from Unit 02 were obvious; they were the crimson of that Evangelion's test colours, and a sharp contrast to the intact parts of the armour, which had been stripped down to its base purple to check for microfractures.

Dr Sarany Akanubalaki vy Saranupakalarti, head of the Unit 01 team, brushed a cowlick of black hair away from her eyes, and continued, "... and that about summarises the repairs. To cut it short, Unit 01 is nothing more than functional. We did our best, but..." she bit a lip, "... there's only so much you can do. The internal damage is enough that after this is over, if we're all alive, we're going to have to strip off the chest, and put it through a localised moult-regrowth. There's a hole in its tissue, in its chest, about the size of a tank, once we cut out the crystal-contaminated tissues. It goes all the way through. It's a miracle it missed anything we couldn't replace. Four of the D-Engine/D-Sink pairs were hit by that alone. And there's more. I can tell you that any activity is going to damage it more, but," she shrugged, "you're going to say that it's an unavoidable necessity, aren't you?"

"Yes," Ritsuko said, tersely. "Now..."

The _nazzady_ fixed her eyes on her immediate superior. "It's almost ready to move, when the inspection is done but... I _don't like_ the additional modifications we have to make." Her red eyes were narrow, as she added, "I'm not blind, Ritsuko. I can recognise what the modifications are for. But the orders came straight from the Representative, and what Ikari wants..." She paused. "What the senior Ikari wants, that is," she corrected herself. "I doubt Test Pilot Ikari will want it. But... eh."

The blond nodded in slightly peeved agreement.

"Of course," the other woman continued, looking at Ritsuko from the corner of her eyes, "have you checked that the Test Pilot will actually be piloting? I wouldn't, if I were him."

"Mis... Major Katsuragi is seeing to it," Dr Akagi said, "or least, she should be. She's Operations, so the pilots are her responsibility. We just need to ensure that the equipment is in the best possible state for her."

The head of the Unit 01 team acknowledged the mild rebuke with a nod.

"Dr Akagi." The voice came up from her PCPU.

Reaching down, Ritsuko acknowledged the call, even as Sarany turned on her heel, and hurried off. "Yes, Tola?" she acknowledged the head of the Unit 00 team.

"Unit 00 has been fully recovered. I've sent you the damage report from the sortie, but you haven't responded yet."

Inwardly, the Director of Science sighed. They had recruited Dr Sopheap from the Engel Group, where she had been in charge of frontline testing and deployment for one of their Species sub-Projects, and it showed. "No, Tola, I haven't," she said, already bringing up a harcontact display to read yet another Urgent message. "I have, literally, just got out of a ritual."

"I do require your formal authorisation to proceed," the other woman chided her.

Eyes flickering across the display, Ritsuko scan-read the message, and the attached diagrams. "Are you sure you can get the repair work complete?"

"Yes." The word was solid, confident. "It's a B-2 part, but the hand design is the same. It's very fortunate that the Unit only took a glancing blow like that. It'll make the repairs much easier... which we will want, if we want Unit 00 to carry a handheld weapon. Oh, and the Test Pilot's synch ratio was low enough that she didn't even take mild sympathetic burns," Dr Sopheap added, as an afterthought.

"Don't do it," Ritsuko ordered.

"What?" The tone was confused.

"I mean, 'permission is refused'," she said acerbically. "That's the arm we're installing the blast shield on. She doesn't need a hand for that arm."

"But..."

"Get the Unit loaded onto the train ASAP. You can finish the _important_ repairs in the L2 Geocity. A hand isn't important compared to the extra armour."

She could hear the gritted teeth in the, "Yes, Doctor," and the cursory way that the line was cut. Ritsuko didn't care. Like too many of the staff recruited from the Engel Group, Dr Sopheap tended to treat the Evangelions as little more than enlarged versions of their child-technologies. As a result, Tola was looking as this as the loss of the primary weapons system of the Unit. But that was not that the mission profile that Major Katsuragi had designed called for, and so, simply, it was not needed.

It was that simple.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Shinji Ikari awoke again to a subtle swaying motion. Like a babe in his mother's arms, he lay, eyes closed, surrounded by warmth, gently rocked from side to side. Slowly, one hand crept up, to rest upon the smooth skin of his chest, to feel the thud of his heart and the rhythmic pulsation of his breath.

It felt good. Through the depths of bone-deep weariness, there was a tiny spark of exaltation. He was alive, and he was warm, and it was good.

Two blue eyes slowly opened, feeling gummy and sticky. Though slightly blurry and indistinct, Shinji could not recognise the... no, it wasn't an entry plug. It wasn't curved enough, and it was the wrong colour. What was the word? Ah, yes. Ceiling. It was an unfamiliar ceiling that arched above him, low, clean snow-white, and covered in what looked like handholds. It was a utilitarian thing. It was something designed for a role, and, hence, it would carry out its role.

Somewhere, from outside his field of vision, there was the snap of a book being closed, and the faint, wet sound of a lid being reattached to a pen. With an effort, he tilted his head, to gaze upon two frigid grey eyes, locked upon his face. Two grey eyes, in a milk-coloured face, situated above a white plug-suit. It had obviously been used; he could smell the LCL, which plucked at the chords of memory like a knife. It was a scent that both repulsed and called to him.

The heartbeat became a hummingbird's wings. He knew her from somewhere. She was familiar. Very, very familiar.

"Ayanami," he croaked, through disobedient vocal cords. "Rei."

The girl tucked her book back into army-green rucksack by her chair, along with the pen, and then removed a PCPU. All the time, her gaze never left his. "I have come to provide necessary equipment for the as-yet-unnamed operation to engage Harbinger-5 again, in defence of London-2, as well as the interim briefing."

His eyes began to droop shut again.

"I bought you a meal." The girl paused. "There are also stimulants. The dosage requirements are on the packet," she continued, standing up. With a faint clink, she lifted the tray in one hand, and, the other hand working its way across the ceiling, she made her way to place the tray beside his bed. The clink of the plastic was reassuringly solid.

"My... head...muscles... everything aches. And tired."

"Medical micromachines are currently rebuilding nerve connections throughout your body. The discomfort is tolerable," Rei said, shifting slightly to unconsciously flex her right arm. "Now," something heavy impacted his legs, as she dropped a sealed packet in black on his legs, "here is a fresh plug suit. You will wear this plug suit on the operation."

"You're... okay?" he managed, ignoring her comments. It seemed a little unfair to Shinji, in his current state that, she seemed to be so completely untouched by anything, while he was lying here incapacitated.

The girl tilted her head slightly. "I took only minor fractures in the first engagement against Harbinger-5, and they were self-induced in my attempts at evasion," she stated. "I have also been deployed again, while you were dead. I lost a hand."

Shinji frowned. She appeared to have both hands. And... "I w-was dead?" he stammered, his breathing suddenly laboured.

"It was not the hand of this body. I was piloting the Evangelion at the time," Rei added. "My synchronisation ratio with Evangelion Unit 00 was low enough that I did not experience sympathetic damage."

"W-wait. I. Dead?" Shinji managed. It was a matter of some importance to him.

"Yes." The girl blinked. "You got better," she said, no shift in intonation at all.

There was spluttering from the figure on the bed, which turned into coughing. "I. I. W-wait, do you just mean 'clinically'. Not dead, dead?" he asked, weakly.

"You were clinically dead, yes." Rei paused, and continued, her voice sounding as if she were reciting something she had memorised. "We are on a heavy transport train, connecting Ostberlin-2 and London-2. Evangelion Units 00 and 01 are also on this train, repairs having been made to them, to get them operational. That will not prevent your deployment."

Shinji winced. That had been an objection he might have bought up, had he thought of it. That she had already pre-empted it was... he yawned, and closed his eyes.

The cold voice of the white-haired girl still managed to piece his fatigue. "You are to eat, and take the dosage of stimulants provided, as to ensure that you conform to the timetable."

Slowly, groggily, the boy shook his head, but nonetheless managed to force himself to sit up, muscles in his back screaming at unexpected use. Opening his eyes, he started down at the plug suit, neatly packaged. The '01' visible on the front seemed to be winking at him.

"You will wish to put that on. It will be cold outside."

Shinji looked up, to see the girl's head tilted slightly, as she stared down at him. No comprehension dawned on him. She stared back. Shinji shook his head, trying to dispel some of the blurriness which still hung over him. "I'm... what? I... what are you talking about?"

"You are naked."

He squinted. He looked down. Huh. So he was, under the sheets. He hadn't noticed that. And the act of sitting up had made them roll away. He wouldn't have been aware of that, unless Rei had pointed... Rei... girl... naked... naked Rei...warm... exposed...

A squeak, and a hurried grab of bedsheets left him in a somewhat less exposed state. His head drooped, the fringe of dark hair just protruding into his vision, to shield him from the stare of the white girl. "Sorry," he muttered.

"For what?" There seemed to be a hint of curiosity in Rei's voice.

"Because... um... well, just, sorry." He paused, and swallowed. "I... I've been saying that a lot recently," he remarked, almost to himself, eyes half-closed. "Still... at least we're now even?" Shinji pre-emptively flinched, as he realised just how stupid that statement was.

"You will eat."

The food, if that was what one deigned to call the broth-like drink, looked singularly unappetising to him, and he said as much.

"You will eat," Rei said again, her intonation identical.

"I'm not hungry," he said, turning away, and slumping back down.

"You will eat. You require nutrients."

"Why?"

"To maintain focus while piloting."

Oh. Yes. "Must I?" he asked, the self-pity audible.

"Yes."

"I don't want to," he blurted out. "It... it hurts, and I just want to sleep! You... you can only stand and tell me that I must do it because you haven't had to... do..." he trailed off. After a moment's pause, he looked back at her.

The two grey eyes were fixed on the wall, above his bed. He felt, somehow, that not only was she not looking in his direction, she was _not_ looking in his direction, and that was utterly different.

"Sorry." There it was again. "But... but..." he bit his lip. Indeed, he bit a little too hard, and tasted blood. "I don't ever want to have to do it again."

"Stay here." The unexpected words came through the veil of tiredness.

"What?"

"Stay here. I will pilot. Unit 01 can be reconfigured for me."

There was an odd feeling, almost akin to pressure on a forgotten bruise, deep within his stomach. That they could... would... he blinked. That was what he wanted, wasn't it? "They can do that?" he asked.

"Yes. You know that. Dr Akagi can order such a change." Rei straightened out, subtly. "I will go. You will stay here, in this bed. I may see you afterwards."

The way she said 'bed', despite the lack of audible emotion, nevertheless filled Shinji with an odd feeling of rage, of anger at the way that she was patronising him. "Fine," he snapped back, jolting upright even as his body protested. Wincing, groaning, he nevertheless glared at her.

She did not even look at him, but continued to stare at the wall. "I will inform Dr Akagi that the Third Child is not willing to carry out his duties."

"Yes! They're... they're duties I never wanted, never asked for, never... never ever was really asked about or... or anything! Why? Why should I do it?"

"It is necessary. It must be done by someone." She blinked, once. "Lie back down. You may damage yourself," she said, turning around and heading towards the door. She paused for just a moment there, and there was the slightest twitch of her head, as if she were about to turn around. She did not do so.

"Goodbye," she said, her tone not only cold, but dead.

The door slid shut behind her, and Shinji was left alone, in this white, cold, clinical room, the burning reds and crimsons of rage and shame painting themselves behind his eyeballs. One hand jerked out, and, unlooking, he grabbed the cup. A long slurp resounded through the room, as he took a mouthful of nutrient broth.

It didn't make him feel better.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The OIS perimeter around the building was secure, and growing more so by the minute. The hulking figures of power armour were joined by stationary anti-tank emplacements, the dark-grey-and-blue capsules keeping their anti-armour railguns trained on the designated locations.

Almost all of the people were gone. Only a few, specially chosen, manned the necessary command sections, and they were few indeed, because there was very little that could not be controlled remotely. Humans, no matter their subspecies, were to evacuate away from any instance of Budapest Syndrome.

And yet a fresh armoured truck was permitted past the security cordon at the dome entrance, its wheels silent on the road. The man driving it paused and held an arm out of the window, as his genetics were checked again; as it retracted, he winced, sweeping back his red hair. "We're here," he called back, as he pulled to a stop, at the point where the tank traps blocked the robe.

The side of the van unfolded, and a tall _nazzada_, his hair combed up into an afro, straightened, unfolding out of the vehicle. Stretching, he cricked his neck, a slight muttered comment providing his opinion of the seats, and stepped out, followed by two, slighter figures. Both women were wearing transparent facemasks, and light armour, but compared to the heavy armour and unmanned vehicles around here, they seemed comically underprotected.

These were specialists, here on the direct orders of Deputy Director Echo. They were aware that armour, or even ANaMiNBC protection, would not help against Budapest Syndrome.

With a nod, and a few curt words, the women strolled in, their eyes alert. The larger man, meanwhile, returned to the vehicle after stretching, and began the process of connecting up all the systems of the building, routed through the OIS containment station outside this dome, back through his vehicles. Any objections were routed through the fact that this team were specialists directly under orders from Deputy Director Echo, the Section Head of the London-2 branch of the OIS, and were promptly withdrawn.

The driver leant back, hands behind his head and an uneasy expression on his face, as muffled curses in Nazzadi resounded through the vehicle's chassis, interspersed with the calm voices of LAI systems, which, for some reason, did not seem to be helping.

Inside the building, though, all was quiet. The two women had already removed their masks. One was blonde, the other darker-haired, but there was a certain similarity in their blandly attractive faces which suggested some relationship.

[So, what do you think, ASPARTAME?] the blond 'said' over her interface, her hands running over the barrel of her stubby, bulky pistol, fingers tapping and stroking it unconsciously. Obviously, she was eventually satisfied, because a button was depressed, and the rails extended and expanded, the systems in the railweapon coming online with a hum. [Authorisation APHRODITE, reconfigure for special ammunition, Classification 'Flayer',] she instructed the weapon's LAI over a link.

[Acknowledged. Please Insert Specified Ammunition Type.]

The darker-haired one shrugged. [The OIS got it contained quickly,] she 'replied'. [And no-one seemed to have stumbled into it when they kicked down the door. So we got... maybe twenty, thirty people in this Budapest? Not much.]

[That's what I was thinking,] the blonde said, sliding the magazine in. There was a tone, and a light on the handle turned green.

[We've had worse,] her companion remarked. There was suddenly... something in her hand, a line of distortion and anomaly and darkness and light and paradox; a vague barb of a sword which seemed to writhe as something alive.

[Yep.] The dark-haired woman shrugged. "Hey, APOSTATE, get them to give us access to local systems, would you?" she asked, verbally, over the comms link. "They still haven't."

"On it." A slight pause, followed with some profanity. "Done," was the next word said which was suitable for polite company.

The blond tapped a button on her PCPU with her thumb, and paused for a moment. "Okay... okay... and, get it open," she said, working her way through the menus.

[Yes. Opening.]

The interior doors opened, and the two women stepped in, sealing the door behind them.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The door to Shinji's room slid open again, and Misato stepped through, her uniform marred by the filter mask slung around her neck and the thick mass of body armour over her torso. Slowly, almost painfully carefully, she picked her way over to his side, one hand always clinging to the nearest ceiling hold.

"Hey," she said, her voice softer than usual. "I think we should tal..."

"No." Shinji's voice was flat, almost dead, as he interrupted. He didn't even meet her gaze, instead keeping his eyes locked on the unfamiliar ceiling. He didn't want to look at her. "No. I'm no-not doing it. I'm not getting back in that th-th-thing. Not again. It _killed_ me." He sucked in a breath. "And... and you said it. Before... when I was feeling all nervous." He swallowed. "You said I wasn't going to be killed. I was. I can't believe I'm saying it, but... clinically dead is still dead, if only for a while!"

There was an uncomfortable silence, only broken by the waver and sway of the train.

"Well," Shinji said, bitterly, shifting slightly to prop himself up on his arms a fraction, before sinking back down. "Aren't you going to s-say something like 'You only died a little bit', or 'You got better', or... or anything? Anything...anything trite to try lessen the fact that it _h-h-hurt_ and I was sort of de-dead and I never want to have to get in that _thing_ again ever!" He swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry. "It was so... cold," he muttered. "Cold and dark. Except when it wasn't. But... it was... no. Never again."

"No." Misato's voice was quiet, hollow-sounding. "I can't lessen it. I can't justify it. I can't explain it. If Strategic Missile Command hadn't mismanaged the deployment of warheads, we could have hit it with multiple ones, like the ones we initiated in the first attack, and we know that managed to get through the AT-Field. If the Migou hadn't moved interdiction forces into the North Atlantic, Asuka... that's Unit 02's pilot, could have been moved over. If I'd pushed harder, I could have maybe had Unit 02 stationed over in L2 already, and it wouldn't be needed." She slumped down in a chair by the bed, not meeting the boy's gaze. "There's so many ways we could have not needed to do this. But we do need to. And it's a terrible thing." She bit on her lip. "It's wrong that we want you to do this. It's wrong that we need you do this... except we don't. That's the worst thing. This isn't the only option."

"Then why don't you..."

"Because Rei, in Unit 00, doesn't have the fine AT-Field control," the dark-haired woman continued, in that same, broken-sounding voice. "She can't, physically, do it like you could. Remember, she had her first successful start-up test yesterday. So if we use her... we'll have to get her to nearly point-blank range, and even if she survives that, the odds are that she will not survive the use of the weapon."

"So you're getting me to pilot again by putting her in danger." It was a simple statement.

"No." Misato shook her head. "As you said, it left you clinically dead. Believe me, I'll understand if you don't want to. I might not agree, but, believe me, I'll understand. All too well. But I am going to tell you the facts. And this is a fact, that because Rei only has simulator practice, she is worse at AT-Field manipulation than you, has a worse synch ratio, and so will probably die. The MAGI give her odds of survival at about 10%, even if she survives getting into position. You saw what that thing was like; how it was able to target everything. And if she fails, the odds are that we'll need to use the RAPTURE contingency." She lifted her chin slightly. "Do you want to know what RAPTURE is?" she asked.

"Uh..." Shinji frowned, trying to ignore the sudden churning, swirling acidic feel in his stomach, and glanced over at her for the first time. "Well, the word means 'happiness', doesn't it? But I don't th-think that's a happy thing."

She shook her head. "No. Not happy at all. There are enough fusion warheads built into the structure of London-2 to reduce the entire city to something like a three-kilometre deep crater."

"Wh-why? What's so important that you need to..." the boy paused, unable to continue. Unwilling to continue

"Because we can't let them win." The Major's voice had changed; although it was still quiet, it was quiet in the same way that a tiger in the night is quiet; something only made more dangerous by the lack of volume. "We can't let them get any benefit, even from taking a city. And I don't just mean the Harbingers by 'them'. I mean anyone who's not us. Migou, Deep Ones, Stormites, a Harbinger... whoever. They all make use of people. Make people less than people. Use them against us. I don't... we won't let them. Every major arcology is set up the same way. After what I saw in China and after A... it's something I fully agree with." The woman's eyes flickered over to the armoured wall of the train, breaking his gaze. "It's better than the alternative."

Shinji took several shuddering deep breaths, and let them out slowly, feeling the muscles in his chest ache from so little. The idea of such things, that the New Earth Government, the _good guys_ were willing to go to such lengths to stop... "What happens if the Harbinger wins? What will it do?"

"I could tell you," the Major said, still staring at the wall. "And I said earlier, that I was going to tell you the facts. I... I've studied the reports from Harbinger-1 and I w... and looked at some of the after-effects. But, again, just like with RAPTURE, I'll ask you again. Do you really want to know?"

There was silence. Then, "No," Shinji said, staring back up at the ceiling. "I d-don't want to know. B-but," he stammered. "Do I have a chance about not-knowing? You're not going to tell me anyway?"

There was a single nod from the woman. "No. If you don't want me to, I won't force you to listen."

"Then, as I said, I don't want to know." The boy paused. "You look like you know, and... no, I don't want to. But..." and he swallowed hard, trying to search for the right words "... I really don't want to go against... to get in the Unit. B-but, from what you say?" Images of Unit 00 being annihilated in Harbinger-born radiance, swiftly followed by the faces of his classmates, of everyone he might have seen in London-2, throbbed in his head. "I don't have a choice."

"No. You have a choice."

"No... that's n-not quite the same thing," the boy said, wanting to gesture with his hands to explain, but feeling too weak to even manage that. "I mean... well, you're giving me a choice. But I don't have a choice. I want to run away, far away, and never see any of this again. But I won't." He let out a weak chuckle. "And can't, too. I mean, I'd collapse before I got..." the words were broken by coughing.

A watery smile crept onto Misato's face, at the poor joke. "You'll do it," she said. It was not a question.

"Yes." Several deep breaths. "Yes. I don't know if I can actually," he winced, "actually physically do it, but... I want to do it. I have the intent of doing it. Because... I can't _not_."

Stepping over to the side of the bed, Misato squatted down, head at his eye level, reaching out to squeeze his hand. "I'm sorry, Shinji," she said, in a tone carefully purged of elation. "But... thank you." Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a widescreen PCPU. "Now, see this?" she asked, thumbing it on.

Shinji nodded. "It's one of the training placards? Isn't it? For the AT-Field stuff." He frowned. It was notably more complicated than any of the other ones; the three dimensional image a mess of layered red and blue lines. It had some resemblance to the 'spike' shape they used to show him how to surround a blade, but... different.

"Correct. We need you to memorise this. Completely. Perfectly. It will be the only way that you can fire the modified LANCE system we're fitting to Unit 01." She swallowed. "I am going to explain what this will involve. Please," she almost begged him, "listen to everything that I have to say before you say anything."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

And now the two women stepped out of the building, masks back on, weapons no longer there, stepping promptly into the decontamination centre that the OIS had erected. They showed up clean, and there was a sigh of relief from the watchers and their handler.

"Captain Joyeuse," the blonde said, opening a link to the OIS team outside. "We have examined the bravo-type ENE."

Ori, safe away from the... the thing, shuddered slightly. Those disposal and examination experts were far, far braver than her; she'd had nightmares after the bit when they'd explained Budapest Syndrome to her, and the knowledge that one of the people on her team, Gjorgji, had actually been in Budapest in '67... well, she didn't envy the man. "Yes, Agent Biksisu?" she asked, trying to keep her voice calm.

"It seems to have been a deliberate formation," the specialist stated, with a slight shrug, which Ori felt was rather inappropriate. "That's both good and bad. Good, because it hasn't self-catalysed, and so it has a small absorption radius. Bad, because there's someone out there who knows how to do this."

The captain paled. "I... I see."

"The site has been contained adequately," the darker-haired woman added. "Grade 5b sterilisation will be required, to purge the ENE. I would also recommend that you flood the section with carbon monoxide, to prevent any aerobic lifeforms from getting near, and adding to the coalescence. I have attached the recommendation to our initial report."

"Yes... yes, that makes sense."

"We have been ordered to another site," she continued, her brow furrowing slightly. "This looks to be a busy day."

"And to think that this was meant to be our day off," her co-worker added. "A city-wide evacuation notice, and all these Budapests. Well, we're certainly earning our monies today."

Captain Joyeuse swallowed slightly. Gallows humour. How... funny. "Understood. I'll just need you to submit your provisional containment report, before we can acknowledge this."

"Talk to Agent Garta," the blonde said. "We've given him our data; he's the team leader."

"Okay, I understand." Ori sighed, and cut the link, letting her head slump into her hands. Looking around, at the faces of her colleagues, she was not alone in this feeling. A deliberately caused instance of Budapest Syndrome.

This was _bad_.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

It was now late afternoon, and the reduced timetable which the Academy had put on had finished. It was questionable how much attention had been paid, of course, because the combination of widespread tiredness, and the natural inattentiveness when a full-scale warning was still in place, had unified their efforts to make the intricacies of mathematics lose their lustre, somewhat.

The fact that there had been two absences; 'Ayanami, Rei' and 'Ikari, Shinji', had been noted. The Academy was a highly selective school, designed to train the next generation of world leaders and scientists for their future careers, and to engender a love of knowledge and the ability to solve puzzles in its students. They were more than capable of putting facts like 'Shinji and Rei are not here' and 'last time something like this happened, some kind of monster attacked' together.

"I wish we were allowed up to the surface to watch!" moaned Kensuke, sitting at his desk, and glaring at the security notice warning of restricted Grid access. "I bet they're being deployed right now. Just think of it; two shining titans, weapons firing bright high energy lasers and plasma, valiantly standing forth against the abominations which imperil humanity. And Nazzadity," he added, with a sideways glance at Toja, which somewhat ruined his attempts to puff up his chest. "And then come the large explosions and the awesome flawless victory!"

Red eyes were rolled at that comment. "It's not that pretty," the taller boy said. "It's messy, and the things are terrifying, and... _delo kivilita pla kontrunosesa_, he's braver than me if he chooses to do that."

"Yeah, well, you got to actually see a battle," the human said, crossing his arms, and pouting slightly. "Why'd it have to show up at your Social Work Task, not mine, when I was actually... argh. I'm thinking the fates are conniving to stop me from ever seeing an Eva in action. What I'd give to be let in the cockpit of one! I wouldn't even need to be allowed to pilot. I'd just want to get to _touch_, to _see_ it!"

Toja looked away, and the other boy sucked in a breath.

"Sorry," he apologised, leaning back a bit. "I forgot... how is your sister, anyway?"

"Actually... they've got her in physio right now," Toja admitted, with a weak smile. "She managed to take her first steps... her second first steps, come to think of it, anyway, well, she's really wobbly, but..." he choked up. "I saw how... hard, and I... so proud."

They sat in stoic, and manly, silence for a few moments, before the teacher at the front of the class stood up, his chair scraping along the floor, and cleared his throat.

"Ahem. If you will all... thank you." He coughed. "Yes. I've just received notice that... well, I guess you're all aware that the school serves as an evacuation shelter for other schools too."

"Yeah, the lunch hall was packed with little kids," Ala, sitting on the other side of the class, could be distinctly heard to mutter. "They ran out of chips because of them."

"They've been cooped up in the emergency shelters for most of the day, and so, apart from exercise breaks..."

"It's bad enough at the start of term when the new first years are all there, let alone this."

"Yes, thank you, Ala," the teacher said, with a sigh. "Yes, it's annoying, but you're meant to have more community spirit." He coughed, again. "Well, they've... 'they' being the Headmaster, have decided that we need to spend a few hours stopping small children going stir-crazy, and so each class is being assigned a class of children from another school. We'll be expected to keep them entertained for a while, and also... well, most of the schools are feeder schools for the Academy, so they'll have a chance to see where they'll be able to go, if they're good enough."

"Great," the boy drawled, no longer even attempting to conceal it as a stage whisper.

"Did I mention, Ala, that they'll be counting this as a SWP occasion, with the time counting towards your overall mark for the module?"

The boy suddenly sat rigid upright. "I am suddenly overcome with a desire to help small children," he stated.

"I thought you might be."

Gingerly, Kimuna, sitting in the middle of the class, raised his hand. A slightly dreamy look, as usual, was present in his pink eyes. "What age are they?" he asked. "I mean, will we have to change their nappies, or what?"

The teacher snorted. "Not quite. They're Year 5s; that's nine and ten year olds. They'll be going to secondary school the year after next, and although it might not seem like it, to you bunch of grizzled teenagers, it's not that young."

"Do I detect some sarcasm there, sir?" asked Taly, a smirk on her face.

"Well, that entirely depends on whether your sarcasm detector is working or not," was the rhetorical answer.

Toja blinked twice, eyes suddenly wide. They wouldn't have, would they? Year 5s, from a feeder school? It couldn't be...

"Hello!"

"Oh, look, it's Kany's big brother!"

"Yes! I told you askin' for it would work!"

"Hey, Toja! Look at me!"

It was.

Hikary raised one eyebrow at him. "Toja." There wasn't even a need for a question.

"They're in my sister's class," he explained with an affected tone of boredom, trying to keep it to that. "I've been SWP temping with them. That's how they know me."

"Oh, okay." Hikary nodded. "Well, that will be helpful." She smiled at him. "I hope we can rely on you to help with names and..."

"Don't worry everyone!" a platinum blond little girl declared loudly. "If any of you get lost, Toja will rescue you!"

"Yeah! He's really, really brave!"

With surprising velocity, the _nazzada_'s head collided with his desk. "Why me?" he muttered to himself.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

In the dark room, Director Khoury twitched slightly, as the sustained lack of sleep and the drugs in her system designed to counteract it warred for supremacy.

"London-2. News refresh," she said, her voice flat.

[Director] stated a voice. [ANARCHY Cell. APOSTLE reports that APHRODITE and ASPARTAME have secured the Bravo-Sierra sample from Site Alpha-3, in London-2. They are proceeding to Site Alpha 4.]

"Good," the woman said, red eyes reflecting the light from the screens. "It is contained?" she asked, unnecessarily. The woman blinked, slowly.

[Yes.]

"Good. Continue."

[Nothing else, Director.]

"Praetoria-B? News refresh."

[CENOTAPH Cell is en route. No other changes, Director.]

The burble and susurration of voices resumed, as she moved onto other topics.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Rits. He's in. He'll do it."

The blond raised her eyebrows at the news, and briefly considered checking if her cochlear implant was, in fact, functioning properly. "Really?" she asked. "How... how did you manage that? I was sure that he'd refuse."

"He did. So I explained the facts to him."

"All of them?" There was concern in the scientist's voice. "But..."

"Of course not. That would be cruel. But enough that he could make his decision whether or not to pilot, actually knowing what he was doing by choosing either way." She heard a sigh over the link. "And I told him I was sorry."

"Sorry? For what? What did you do wrong?"

"Rits, they don't pay you to deal with people. Robots, yes. Ackersby organisms, yes. People, no. As Director of Operations, I _have_ to." There was a click, and hum over the line. "Look... we have him, so we can proceed with the primary plan. Now, Director of Science, do your thing, and get me Unit 01 in the best possible state for this. I owe him that much. For lying to him by telling the truth."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The sounds of feet against the metal floor was a constant backdrop to the bustle and bluster of the evacuation process. The rich, who lived deeper, in the larger arcology domes built more recently, might be already pre-evacuated, but the masses that lived in the slums of the surface and in the oldest, shallowest domes, were not so safe. Millions of people had to be moved, in a population movement which put the daily commute of rush hour to shame.

A man, sweat beading on his forehead, pushed a heavy cart, laden down with nanofactory feeder capsules. His eyes flicked nervously from side to side. Around him, the crowd was snarled and disordered; voices raised in worry and agitation as the orderly evacuation was slowed to a snail's crawl.

"Hey!" The man pushing the cart flinched slightly, but forced himself to relax, as an ArcSec officer stepped over, red eyes somewhat annoyed, and weary. "What's this?" the man asked, in a strongly Nazzadi-accented deep voice.

The man shrugged. "Moving stuff," he explained, unhelpfully. "That is," he hastily added, "I just got in an order that more refills get moved down to one of the safety bunkers."

"Then why aren't you using the supply corridors?" the officer asked.

"I didn't have a specialist pass, okay? I'm not normally with Resupply, but the guy lives deep, and so is already evaced. They grabbed me from Waste Disposal. 'Least I'm earning overtime for this."

The _nazzada_ coughed. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to come with me," the officer ordered, eyes flicking at the crowd which was forming behind him.

"Urgh. Umm... that is, fine, yes."

The cart was pushed to the nearest transit corridor, and from there, it was only a short distance to the nearest ArcSec waystation. The man pushing the cart was taken to be genescanned, and a full verification done on his background, while the items themselves were taken for a closer examination, to check that they were actually what the RFID tags on the packages claimed they were.

"What do we have here?" the technician manning the scanner asked, an unlit cigarette sticking out from between her lips.

"Flagged as suspicious," the _nazzada_ who had bought the delivery in explained. "Crate ID say that they're nanofac refills for Bunker NNE 00102, but... he was acting suspiciously. Wasn't moving them along the supply corridors, for one, and..."

"Yeah, yeah, just getting the 'bots to grab the crate info," the woman said, her forehead crinkling. "Just push them through the arch... yeah, walk through too. Okay." Her machine bleeped, and a red light appeared on her arglasses. "Okay. Yeah, I'm gonna need a random one..." she raised a hand, "okay, randomiser selected package number ZZA9WYA923Q. That's the one, right hand corner, middle layer. Just going to have check that it's clean, as per protocol."

The checks were run, as the bulky, heavy capsule was moved by the technician, in her exosuit, into the sample nanofactory set up to test the contents. She stepped back, servos whining, as the machine accepted the sample, sealing after entry, and began to extract tiny amounts of the theoretically homogenous contents. There was a faint whine, as the mass spectrometer warmed up, and the tests began. The _nazzada_ officer flinched; the technician showed no sign that she could even hear it.

After about a minute or two, it bleeped again, the light coming up green.

"Okay, yeah, it's okay, and all the other ones are null-tamper," the technician said with a shrug, bending down to lift the refill out of the device with a grunt. "I'll just stick it back on the cart, then you can get the idiot out of here. Tell him and his 'corp... Armourcorp, isn't it? Yeah, issue them a caution for breaking handling auth'."

"Don't tell me how to do my job," the officer said, his eyes narrowing.

The woman shrugged. "Look, I'm overloaded already. The 'corp fuckers have to be reminded not to waste ArcSec time because they don't get the proper transit auth'. Bastards who think that money buys them immunity to the law."

The cart was sent on its way, and the hapless courier received a lecture from the ArcSec officer.

And no-one was any the wiser that package ZZA9WYA923Q had stayed in the scanning office, and been replaced by its identical twin.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

There was a crack on the wall, a thin, spiderlike-break right at the join, so the 'legs' ran on either side of the wall. Someone, sometime, Toja noted, had drawn around it, making it more arachnid, shaping the lines with a border of grey. Shaking his head, he sighed, and glanced down at his MP. Services were still cut. He couldn't even access his music collection, and briefly he muttered a short complaint at his sister, who had wiped the internal memory at some point. He almost asked himself why he had even let her borrow it, but then the memory of why returned, and he sighed again.

"Hello." The voice was young and female, a piping voice directly behind him. "I came to talk to you."

Toja glanced back, to see the girl with the dark-brown hair, tied asymmetrically. Two green eyes were staring at him. "Hello," he said back, not trying to be particularly friendly. "Imi, yes."

There was a pause. Then, "Why? Why are you being like that?"

The boy glanced around again, twisting his body to face her. "Being like what?"

"I just said 'hello'."

"Well, I'm kinda not feeling welcoming," Toja said back, narrowing his eyes. "I've had a long day, my MP's playing up, so I'm kinda bored, and I've..." he paused, and pushed on, after seeing that there were none of the other ones in the younger class nearby, "... and I've had your friends being annoying."

A pause. "You mean _PCPU_," Imi said.

"What?"

"The device. It is a Personal CPU, not an MP."

"It's a _manuprokedi_. Same thing, different word. And MP is shorter."

The nine-year old gave a one-shouldered shrug. "That's not why you're in a bad mood. You are just sitting here, staring at the wall. Even when people try to talk to you."

"And what's that to you, huh?" the boy almost snapped.

"You were the one who left the bunker to find me. Even though I did not need finding," Imi said, returning his stare. "Why are you in a bad mood?"

"Look... I don't want to be reminded of that, right?" the _nazzada_ said, his eyes narrowing to slits. "I just wanna forget that it even happened." He shook his head. "I have nightmares about it," he added, in a softer voice.

"I do not."

"Well, lucky you! You were in the cupboard!" He realised he was raising his voice, and that Hikary was staring in his direction from the other side of the classroom, where she was talking with the teacher, and lowered it again. "Look, I..."

"Then you shouldn't have done it." The girl folded her arms and glared at him, eyes level despite the fact that he was sitting down. "I'd have been fine."

Toja could feel her eyes on him. "Well... no," he admitted. "I... I couldn't just leave someone out there. I know I shouldn'tve done it... but I wasn't thinking, so I'd prob'ly do it again." He sighed. "It's more the idea that another _thing_ like it is up there again."

Imi pushed herself up, to sit on his desk. "I know," she said, eyes staring up at the ceiling. "It's up there. Somewhere. At least we got moved to a deep shelter this time. We didn't, last time."

"I know. And the fact that we're stuck down here, just... trying to hide from something that probably knows where we are, and..."

"Yes."

The boy ran his hands over his face. "I hope Shinji is okay," he said, suddenly. "Him'n Rei."

A pause. "Who?"

Toja blinked, rapidly. "Oh, friends," he said. "Well, Shinji is a friend, Rei is... Rei. But they're... stuck in another bunker, because... they were off sick."

"I see."

"I just hope I could... like, help them..."

"To get better."

"Yeah, that."

Imi tilted her head. "Have you sent them a get-well message?" she asked. The girl gave a mono-shouldered shrug, again. "That's what we did for Kany, and what they do for me when I get ill." She blinked. "Oh yeah," she said, slipping the bag off her shoulder, to pull out a red device, which looked a little like a large highlighter pen; a similarity which only grew more pronounced when she took the cap off. Without hesitation, she rolled up her skirt slightly, and then jabbed it into her thigh. Toja gagged slightly, and looked away. He hated needles.

There was a bleep from the device, and Imi glanced at the light beside it, which was green. "Good," she said, putting the cap back on with a click. She glanced back at Toja. "You can look back," she said, to the older boy, a faint twist in her voice. "I've had to have this done since I was very small." She seemed to be prompting a question.

Toja asked it. "Why?"

"It is necessary. And I _hate_ it. It wasn't meant to happen," she said, eyes narrowed. "I'm 'fixed, you know. I shouldn't have to put up with things like this. But I had an episode when I was very little, and I've been on this ever since. " There was sudden vitriol in her voice. "It _hurts_. All the time. The injections only keep it under control." She blinked, and her face was suddenly calmer, more placid. "I'm sorry, Kany's brother," she told the boy. "I should not be telling you _that_."

Toja blinked. "I'm sorry," he said, glancing at her. Yes, that explained a lot about the way she was acting, and the fact that she seemed a little too mentally mature for her age. Humans had been doing all kinds of odd things to their genetics in the years before the First Arcanotech War, the _nazzada_ knew. Most had been fairly mild, removing genetic defects, tweaking for genes linked to long lives and high intellects. Some had been more extreme, done in the genetically liberal states of Japan and the European Union. At every Academy he'd been to, there had been a few children who were suffering from some condition caused by the modifications on their parents. Pre-natal selection and screening was meant to catch such conditions, but genes were recipes, not blueprints; with such small runs of original subjects, something often got missed. It was probably something metabolic or something; those were the most common problems you tended to see, because they didn't have the same level of handicap as the mental problems. "It's... well, you're just unlucky. It could happen to anyone."

"No," she said, the bitterness returning. "Only to me. They found the risk factors afterwards, and took steps to stop it happening again. There's only a few other people it could have affected, anyway."

"Oh." Toja looked with pity at one of his sister's friends. This did make him feel better about his stupid-yet-brave actions to rescue her. She was ill, and did need helping; even if she continued to insist that she hadn't needed to be rescued.

And she had certainly given him things to think about. Yes, she may have been misunderstanding what he was talking about, because of the hasty cover story, but there was something that him and the other people in the class could do to help Shinji. He'd had to put up with little girls praising him, for something which really hadn't been heroic; the least he could do was to make sure that the praise went to the real hero, right?

He stood up, and taking his leave of the little girl, headed over to Hikary, a smile on his face.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"You know, of all the elements of your plan, Miss Director of Operations Katsuragi, this is probably the most surreal," Ritsuko remarked, hooking her fingers into the pockets of the fresh lab coat she was wearing. "I mean, everything involving Unit 01, yes, it's very much a million-to-one chance kind of thing..."

"But it's not," Misato said, mildly, leaning on the railing, gazing down at the Evangelion launch chutes. "Your MAGI give us a thirty-one percent chance of success with no losses, as of the most recent estimate."

"And what were the errors bars?"

"I dunno. Can't remember. Anyway," she shrugged, "error bars go up and down. Big error bars might as well mean we're even more likely to succeed."

Ritsuko snorted. "Okay, right, now you're just _trying_ to annoy me."

"Guilty." Misato shook her head. "But, seriously, what's so surreal about this?"

One eyebrow was raised. "Misato." One finger was jabbed down towards the chutes. "We're packing the chutes with sports cars. We're attacking them to the same launch systems we use to launch the Evas! It's just... ridiculous!"

"Hey! I like driving! You think I like dooming so many high-end cars to their doom?" She blinked. "Well, apart from the ForGM ones. Those things handle like pigs."

"Misato..."

"No, I don't see what's surreal, as you put it. They're the cheapest source of steerable A-Pods, and we just need to activate the control overrides and an LAI can drive for us. We don't need mil-spec drones as decoys. They're chaff, nothing more." She tightened her lips, "I'd rather see any number of cars be destroyed, than watch more human pilots get swatted out of the air by the Harbinger. More drones have to help, even improvised ones. And if it means that it can't see the Evangelions..."

"I'm not saying it doesn't make sense, Misato." The blond shook her head. "I'm just saying, it's kind of surreal to be loading these sports cars into the Eva chutes, as... as if they were some kind of giant blunderbuss."

"Just think of it as a capital-grade decoy flare," the Major advised her.

"Certainly... it's a good idea. I can think of ones a lot worse." She let out a chuckle. "I was half-way afraid that you were going to try to take a naval-yield weapon, and connect it up to the L2 power grid, under the principle of 'more power = more good'."

"Don't be silly, Rits," Misato said, rolling her eyes. "I _am_...I mean, was a mecha pilot. We're expected to know the operating principles behind our weapons. And I know that neither lasers nor charge beams work that way. You can't expect to pump in orders of magnitude more power than something's designed for, and not blow every fuse. If you're lucky and don't melt it solid."

They stared, for a moment, as the cars manoeuvred their own way into position, technicians in exosuits manually checking their placement and bolting them into the launch platform. Small explosive charges would separate them after they emerged, but it would be necessary to hold them in place for the accelerations involved in the launch.

"I wonder if the Misatomobile is going to give its life for the cause?" Ritsuko said, slyly.

"Nope. Not a chance. And nobody calls it that."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The Harbinger could now have been seen from the highest residences in the arcologies, had their occupants been there to watch for it. They were not. The inhabitants of the above-ground buildings had retreated to chthonian safety, to cower like worms from the unyielding predator of the skies. Now the only eyes which watched the heavens were technological, as soldiers, ensconced within the dubious safety of their warmachines, veins flooded with antizonals and phobinhibitors, waited for their foe. Except that was not quite true, for some of the degenerate beasts and creatures which dwelt in the depths of the Old London Underground had come to the surface, to gaze upon the Harbinger.

And if they were too close, it was the harbinger of their destruction. Mot did not care for, or possibly 'about', their worship. Though it had its own master, it did not call upon the Crawling Chaos for aid. The Beast Nyarlathotep was that which it feared and venerated; to call upon it was to draw its attention, and that was unwise. No, Mot was a blinded god; Polythemus without a Poseidon to call upon.

The metaphor was inexact.

The NEG had no intention of leaving the blinded Cyclopean beast alive.

And yet they could not kill it yet. The London-2 defences, already maimed by the onslaught of the last two Harbingers, were no match for even an injured Mot.

Radiance scythed out from the vertices of the geometry of the Harbinger. Armoured fortifications burst in light and fury, nothing more than white-hot craters remaining. The shockwaves crushed shallow arcology domes like empty cans, the black material of the outer sphere rupturing and tearing the buildings within apart. Slowly, inexorably, destructively, Harbinger-5 advanced, bringing death with it.

And then it stopped.

Not long ago, such a thing would have been a moment of victory.

But now? Now, the Harbinger had reached its destination. And its fall was not the work of its enemies. The bottommost point of Mot crushed a skyscraper, the edifice of steel and glass splitting like an overripe fruit, and the shockwave as it pierced the ground sent abandoned cars tumbling through the air like grains of sand in the desert wind. The great trapezohedron, warped and distorted by the perilous bows and arrows of fortune, burrowed a third of its way down, before coming to a halt. The lesser fractal clusters which had survived the assaults rose, to orbit, halo-like, around its head in the evening twilight, still spewing forth light against anything that it could 'see'.

And then it... unfolded.

Like a flower of Stygia, a blossom that might bedeck the hair of Persephone in December nights, it abandoned the seed that it had once been. No longer was it a pentagonal trapezohedron; no, though it retained its five-fold symmetry, it cast off the confines of geometry and embraced the vicissitudes of change. In perfect coordination, the facets that had been its uppermost faces extruded their nature outwards, sketching a path in the air around them, before fracturing into five themselves. From each prismatic face, two night-dark columns of crystal shot down into the earth, crushing buildings and roads and underground tunnels beneath them; ten lances seeking their path down towards their goal. Two more skewed outwards, only to unite with their compatriots, hemming the Harbinger with a ring of its own selfhood, which began to spin.

NEG observers, watching from behind autocensors, watched in fear, for this ring, now free from its main corpus, and, yet, irrefutably part of the Harbinger, somehow seemed to move in both directions at once. From one viewpoint, clockwise; from another, anti-clockwise, and each blink, each subtle motion of the eye, each flicker of attention, seemed to invert the rotation, until the brain gave up, and it became a circle of black motion; a velocity without a vector. The fear grew into terror, as white light, brilliant and radiant, a pure blend of spectral components, began to arc irregularly from the ring to the seedcore of the beast, and each impact reverberated with unearthly resonances. Even the heavens began to act to meet this motion, as the clouded evening sky acquiesced to the spin with its own vortex. The dark rain clouds were torn apart above Mot, as a cyclone formed, the red of the near-night sky as bloody light above the darkness of the Harbinger.

And perhaps that was a way of honouring the final deed. For the uppermost spines rose into a point above it, a tower, growing ever upwards just as the hungry spears reached down to break the doors to Irkalla, and, perhaps, release the dead. But that was just speculation for the purpose of Mot, while the spire that formed above the Harbinger was fact and truth; a vast, five-sided obelisk, seeking the heavens for their own domain.

And slowly, oh so slowly, the void of darkness began to form around the Harbinger again, as the lesser traphezohedrons, vessels of its chrysalis, dissolved back into its night-sky corpus.

Once again, Mot was home.

And it was almost time.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Misato. It's doing something different. Look at this."

The Director of Operation's mouth tightened into a thin line, a curse in poorly pronounced Mandarin escaping from her lips.

"We're trying to find where the core-equivalent is. As far as we can tell... it hasn't moved, but," the scientist shook her head. "I don't trust any data we're getting. The AT-Field... it's the second densest we've ever recorded, and the volume..." Ritsuko trailed off. "I'm not even sure that the concept of 'volume' in normal 1-space is applicable in the area around the Harbinger."

"We're going ahead with the operation," the Major said, forcing calm into her tone. "Its behaviour is within the contingencies. We'll know where the core is, by the time Shinji needs to fire. It's doing just what I expected. How are the Evas?"

Ritsuko nodded over at Lieutenant Ibuki. "Both Unit 00 and Unit 01 have been fully unloaded down in the Geocity," the younger woman said, promptly. "Unit 01 is, on the orders of Representative Ikari, running last-minute calibration checks for the superconducting QUI device transceivers, after MAGI flagged a possible anomaly. Unit 00 is being fitted with the ablative torso dermal plating and the blast shield."

The Major turned on her heel, eyes wide. "How long will Unit 01 be?" she snapped. "What's wrong?"

The Operator's Eyes went blank for a moment, irises lighting up, harcontact style. "Estimated time of completion; 22:03... seven minutes. The MAGI one-to-two evaluated that there was a risk that a slight flicker in IP-21 was indicative of larger damage. They've swapped out the plug for one of the spares; Representative Ikari insisted," she stated. "They're just running checks to make sure that the Third Child's profile has transferred properly."

The dark-haired woman relaxed, slightly. "Understood," she said. "I want to know as soon as it's done. Is the LANCE system fitted properly to Unit 01?" she asked, again.

"Yes, Major," the Operator nodded, making the thick cable that snaked into the back of her skull bounce up and down, synchronised to her motions.

Hands balled into fists, Major Katsuragi glared at the projections of the two Units. "You're going to do this," she muttered. "You're going to do it properly, and you're going to kill this _thing_ dead, and you're not going to get damaged doing this, understand."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Shinji could see it when he closed his eyes, painted against the back of his eyelids. The complex wireframe shape of reds and blues was always there, forcing him to pay attention, the focus shifting around to ensure that he could visualise every single part of the three-dimensional image perfectly.

That was not a metaphor. They had actually fitted him with sofcontacts, which displayed it, as a way of making sure that he paid attention.

But for the moment, he had been permitted a short break, after he had complained of a headache, and they ran checks to make sure that the stimulants he was on were not interfering with the other medications in his still-stiff, still-aching body. So, for the moment, he could just rest for a moment, in the warmth.

It was midday on the surface levels of the London-2 Geocity. The artificial sun had been fixed high overhead, perhaps as a sign of defiance towards the night-black crystalline mass overhead. No matter what the reasons for its placement, though, it was directly above, its bright light shining vertically down on the central pyramid in the Geocity. When the battle began, it would be deactivated, moved to a safe place to cool down, but for now it was there as a source of light.

Once again, his thumb pressed the play button, on the screen on the forearm of his plugsuit.

"Hey, Shinji," Toja's voice said, in the recorded message. "Listen... I don't know if you'll get this, and so I'm not sure how useful this will be... and..."

"If he doesn't get this, he won't know that it was sent," one of the girls, Jony, he thought. "Stop wasting time."

Once again, Shinji snorted. For some reason, he found this section unreasonably funny. It was probably the things that they were using to keep him able to focus, he thought, with a smile.

"...okay." Toja could be heard to take a deep breath. "Listen, Shinji. You're not here, and from what we know, and what happened the last few times you were away like this... well, we don't know exactly what you're doing. But we know that you're doing something important."

"We know that it's something to do with the giant Engel-things," Kensuke added.

"And so," Hikary said, "we, as a class, want to tell you 'good luck'. Good luck with everything. And, above that, we believe in you. We really think you can do it. So, everyone..."

"Good luck!" the class cheered, the speaker crackling from the noise.

"And," Toja added, his voice soft, "I do know, and I've seen you in action. You're a braver man than I am, really. I know you can do it."

There was a bleep. [Message ends], the muse stated.

Shinji leant back again. It was mostly meaningless, he thought, a little cynically. Most of them probably had no clue what he was actually having to do. Even Toja, who had actually seen him piloting, probably thought that the Eva was like a nice, normal mecha, and that he was some brave hero getting to fight valiantly against the foes of humanity.

He glanced sideways at Rei, who was sitting, hugging her knees and staring at the lake. In the light, he could see faint beads of sweat on her forehead, in the false-sunlit warmth. He wasn't a hero. He was just a coward. He should have volunteered at first, even though he had been injured. That's what real heroes did, in films and TV shows. He had been willing to let her do it instead, and had only changed his mind after Misato had told him that she would die and the mission would fail. He didn't think that was heroic.

But, still, it was comforting. He couldn't deny it, and had no desire to do so. And... and it helped remind him. They were somewhere above him, in the school bunker, which meant that they were even closer to the Harbinger than he was right now. Their voices; if he didn't stop the Harbinger, this message, this badly planned, stumbling message, would be the last that he would hear of them. One way or another.

"Rei?" he said, letting the warmth of the false sun shine down on him. "Did... did you get a message? From the others?"

"Yes."

There was silence. Then Rei spoke.

"I did not listen to it."

Shinji frowned. "Why not?"

"Why would they send me a message?" There was unusual emotion in the girl's voice.

Shinji looked over at her. She was looking at him. "Because it's a nice thing to do," he suggested, pulling himself into a sitting position. She actually seemed surprised that anyone would do something as small and as easy as... as just sending her a voice message wishing her luck. And that cold, empty dome where she lived, in an apartment block where she was the only inhabitant, the fact that she never spoke to others at school, but merely sat in a corner, reading, barely even paying attention to the lessons... Shinji frowned, slightly. "Rei?" he asked, again, but this time with a hint of nervousness in his voice. "Why do you pilot? The Evangelion, that is."

Silence. She glanced down, to stare at her gloved hands, and up again. "It is necessary," she said, her voice nothing more than a whisper, her hands twitching as if invisibly grasping control yokes. "All things have a purpose. An Evangelion is made to be piloted. I am the pilot of Unit 00."

The boy looked away, for a moment. "You're brave," he said. She didn't need to be pushed into it, by threats to others, be reminded of the consequences should she not do it. She merely did what was needed. Not like him.

"This is not bravery," she said, in the same whisper. "But you should not be afraid. "

Shinji blinked. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"I will protect you. I have been ordered to do. And above that, it is necessary."

"What do you mean?" he asked, again, blinking off her other comment. "Why is it not bravery?"

No reply.

"Why?"

"I have nothing else," she replied, finally. "Only necessity."

"'Necessity'?" Shinji echoed, eyes widening.

Beside him, Rei stood up, her plug suit squeaking faintly as she moved. Taking a step towards him, she towered over him as he lay on his back. Her head blocked the false sun above them, and lit her white hair as a ghostly halo, even as her face was cast into darkness. "It is time," the girl said, staring down at him. "We must go. We are needed."

A sound chimed in their ears. "Test Pilots, please report to the station point for last checks. I repeat, Test Pilots, please report to the station point."

She turned on her heel, and walked off, again. But this time she turned, to look back over her shoulder. "Goodbye," she said.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

[Intrusion 02 has broken through Layer 029, and is... is growing through 30,] one of the MAGI Operators reported, his eyes wide. [Rate of descent has accelerated.]

[It's still within projected limits,] Lieutenant Ibuki sent back to her subordinate. Immersed in light, the Operators were in a full dive in the MAGI, the full computing resources of the other great accomplishment of the first Evangelion Project dedicated to what was about to come. The hybrid machines, with their unique operating system and clunky code architecture, were in their forte. [July? You have the optimised line of approach for Unit 00?]

[Of course,] replied Lieutenant Cheung. [Forwarded to Operations already. It's set up to live-update based on Harbinger behaviour.]

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Above, on the surface, Harbinger-5 was embedded into the ground, the original pentagonal trapezohedron now little more than a seed for the growths from it. Ten ophidian daggers of obsidian crystal were twining around each other as they worked their way down, making some strange ten-stranded helix. As they grew deeper, the components solidified, and began to branch, interchaining and interlinking, until the probe that resulted resembled nothing less than some complex, degenerate cousin of DNA. The only light that it permitted to exist was the period arcs of white brightness, which came from the rings of undetermined velocity which budded off from the first, spaced at intervals up and down the Harbinger. The initial seed was expanding, too, both upwards and downwards, consuming the helix as its scaffolding as it sought the Geocity, and reaching up to bring the starless night it bore with it to the heavens themselves.

And as a result of these changes, it was now unclear where the core would be.

Major Katsurgagi's plan, however, had taken this into account, because she had suspected that that Mot, who now resembled some vast five-sided obelisk, would take some action to conceal that vulnerability. The tactics for this battle were simple when looked at from afar. Unit 00, fitted with an improvised shield made from capital-grade hull plating, and a normally-stationary plasma turret stripped from its mount and fitted to the Eva's arm, with power leads connected to the city grid, was a diversion. It would be launched from the normal Eva chutes, along with the mass of improvised decoy drones. It was believed that the modifications would be enough to allow it to survive a few hits, of the level that Unit 01 had taken in the first battle.

And Unit 01 was the hammer, or, perhaps, more accurately, the lance. The LANCE prototype, a Huitzilopochtli-class shaped nuclear charge designed for space combat, had been mounted on the Unit's chest, in the hole left by Mot's attack. The weapon, still in the early prototype stage, was designed to be a possible ship-killer. It was surrounded by carefully layered wards and fields which would, at the moment of initiation, warp the fabric of spacetime to such an extent that, while in the frame of reference of the blast it would appear to omnidirectional, to the outside world it would form a tight cone. The pre-existing warding, though incomplete, was to be reinforced by the AT-Field of the Evangelion, and so the flesh of the Evangelion had been grafted around it, and fresh armour crudely mounted on the top. Unit 01 was still in the launch bays. It was not to be moved until the Harbinger's core had been located, and, even then it would be taking the shot from within the launch tubes.

The risk that Unit 01 would be targeted immediately on being launched had been deemed too high for it to take the shot from the surface, and the imprecise nature of the LANCE required it to be rather too close for the Major's preferences. This was the best compromise.

It was at the more detailed level that it got more complicated. Routes of approach, timing of diversionary assaults, the optimal distance for Unit 01 which would minimise the chance of being it targeted, while also handling the inevitable spread of the weapon... it was too much for a human to handle. The MAGI were working on it, from the best data they had at the time, but their theories were all too fallible and it took precious time.

But that was the other reason that the operation had even been approved. By letting the hostile dig itself into the city, it was ensuring that it would absorb more of the blast if, or when, the Rapture contingency was activated. It had reached the stage where the NEG was willing to bet everything on two experimental machines, neither of which were even Mass Production models, because the inevitable alternative was worse. Already, there had been a very limited evacuation of important assets, but there was no way that the millions of inhabitants of the metropolis could have been moved.

And Shinji hadn't exactly been pleased when he had been told that he was expected to have a nuclear charge embedded in his Eva's chest, and to use his AT-Field to shape the blast to form a discrete beam, and, incidentally, not kill himself. But after Misato had explained the stakes, he couldn't say 'no'.

As he waited, lungs filled with LCL, in the entry plug, he was regretting it. His chest felt... odd, off, not quite right, as if it was lacking something vital, which he was used to. But that was nothing, compared to how his head felt. Everything, every sense felt like it was bathed in ice, his vision crystal clear, the inside of the plug suit terribly cold against his skin. He flexed his fingers, feeling the way that he knew exactly where they were, and the texture of the LCL, even through the gloves.

"Don't do that, Shinji," Ritsuko ordered, over the communications link.

He blinked. "What?"

"You're running at 72 plus-or-minus 9 percent." She shook her head. "That's... that's astonishing. That's a personal best for you, by far. I don't know how you're doing it, but..." she blinked, "... that message must really have been helpful," she muttered to herself, before her expression settled again. "But it means that the Unit's catching stray thoughts. If you can't keep things confined to the animaneural sync... to how you've been trained to think about controlling the Eva... please, try not to move." She winced. "And, really, don't make any large movements with your arms. Or legs. Just... try to sit still. Are you ready to try again shaping it?"

Of course, once that had been said, Shinji's nose began to itch. He suppressed it, and swallowed. "How long?" he asked.

"That doesn't matter," Ritsuko said, tersely. "We're going to keep you practising until the last possible moment." She blinked. "T-minus 8 minutes until operational start," she added. "So, please, try again. The better you can get it, the further away from the Harbinger we can deploy you. As it is, we'll need to have you within 340 metres of the core."

"That's bad, isn't it?"

"You're the pilot," Ritsuko said drily, before adding, "But, yes, that is much closer than the Science team would like. So, much as I hate to pressure you..."

"That's a lie," Shinji muttered, through numb-feeling lips.

"... okay. True. But you need to get better. Fast." Ritsuko paused. "Please."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Field Marshal Jameson put his head in his hands. "I don't really know what to say, Major Katsuragi," he remarked, his expression over the link exhausted. "This is a horrible gamble. But, as it stands, the only other choice is to destroy London-2, and... looking at the... at the," he struggled for words, "... _metamorphosis_ that Harbinger-5 has undergone, I'm starting to doubt that even that would work." He shuddered. "I don't care to think that the Migou are doing right now," he said, "because the Hive Ship... it's sprouted multiple bright fusion torches, detaching from it. They're pulling away from the Sun-Earth L2 point."

Admiral Tatuta looked faintly sick, as he added, "The fusion torch on those things; alone... well, it's quite possible that that's what they'd use as a main weapon. They're pulling five-gees; we've got six separate ones, and those are only the torches. Who knows how many A-Pod craft we can't see, because the torches are blinding us." He folded his hands in front of him. "We think those are actual Migou warships," he admitted. "Not just the light S-class vessels, like the Swarms, they use in atmosphere; the ones with A-Pods. Actual, capital ships." The Nazzadi blinked. "We know what the ships they made for AW1 were like; how bad must their actual warships be?" the man, who had been grown in vats in the Oort Cloud, asked.

Misato winced. Yes. Bad. Very bad. Nevertheless, "For this, I will require full operational authority to be formally confirmed. I need you to verify the provisional control you have given me. The MAGI must be given interlaced access to the TITAN-controlled systems in the defence-grid."

The six individuals who made up the Army and Naval Tripartites, glanced at each other. The votes came in, with unanimity.

The Major saluted. "Thank you, sirs. We can now begin the final preparations."

Field Marshal Lehy shook her head, her close-cropped iron grey hair pale compared to her skin. "You're not going to be a Major after this, Katsuragi," she muttered. "One way or another."

"Well, yes," Jameson said, rolling his eyes. "She refused evacuation, to run the operation from the L2 Geocity. If she fails, she'll be dead."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The Harbinger dug deeper, the black, five-faced obelisk growing both upwards and downwards. There were already riots in multiple bunkers, as those unfortunate enough to be close to the monstrosity succumbed to contagious hysteria, while other fell into deep depressions, all higher brain functions slowed to a crawl compared to the vast, overwhelming, inhuman presence of the being.

The necessary steps were taken to control the populace, as remote-activated and autonomous systems came into play.

And the clock counted down.

Inside his entry plug, Shinji shivered, the same icy wrongness with every sense still there. He flexed his fingers, and closed his eyelids, running over and over the shape that he had to visualise.

Within Unit 00, Rei's hands were vice-like on the control yokes, but her breaths were slow and controlled. Slowly, lazily, she blinked.

Major Misato Katsuragi was paying full attention to the countdown on the inside of her Eyes, watching as the numbers inexorably descended. Her hands were balled into fists, knuckles white, and if her nails were not kept short, they would have been drawing blood. Slowly, slowly, she counted down, her words matching with the numbers, as she _cowered down in the darkness, hearing the cries from elsewhere, her voice rising up to match them_ listened to the organised chaos of the last few moments before the operation began.

"Final confirmation check!" she ordered.

[Oranous-00; Unit 00 is in position. Hull compromised; Right Hand Missing. Unauthorised modifications to Unit. All other systems Green within modified parameters.]

[Oranous-01; Unit 01 is in position. Hull compromised; Torso Heavily Damaged. Foreign body in chest cavity. Pilot synchronisation Standard Deviation Grade 2 Warning. Abnormal ANW-Patterns in Pilot Synchronisation. Anomalous Type-2 Attunement Component in Type-1 Attunement. Anom...] the LITAN was cut off by Ritsuko.

"Sorry," the scientist said, "the LITANs haven't been modified to accept the field modifications. We didn't have time to suppress their warning systems and code an interface patch." She glanced at the Major. "I did tell you all this," she reminded her friend, "we are going to be getting dummy error messages, especially for Unit 01. We've hooked Unit 01 straight into the MAGI, instead; the LITAN is just there in case the connection is cut, and..." she waved a hand, "Maya?"

"This is Lieutenant Cheung, and I'll be handling Unit 01," one of the other Operators reported, over the link. "We've recompiled the error handler in the MAGI, and both are reading green, when we've got the modifications in place."

The Major turned, to face Gendo Ikari. "Sir?" she asked. "Should I proceed when things are... should I proceed?" There was only the very slightest hint of hesitation, the faintest chance that she was asking him if he wished to send his son, and the girl who he was guardian to, out to their possible deaths.

"Yes," the man said, from behind his opaque arglasses. His voice was flat. "This is the best chance we shall have."

"Yes, sir."

Turning around, Misato gave the final authorisation.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

There was a chime in Unit 01's entry plug, and Shinji opened his eyes to see, to his left, Unit 00 rocket up the launch chute. Its ascent was slowed slightly by the mass of the hull plating bolted on its right arm, to cover and take advantage of the missing hand. Past it, to his left and right, he could see the cars, converted into crude decoy drones shoot up too, row after row be moved, like ammunition, into the launch chutes.

Taking a deep breath of LCL, he closed his eyes again, staring at the image on the sofcontacts. They were committed, now. Rei was deployed.

Now everyone was depending on him.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The depleted arrays of the defences of London-2, eroded by the previous two Harbingers, and silenced by the orders from Headquarters, opened up with the vengeance and the wrath of an angry god. The atmosphere filled with ionisation trails, as the ferocious batteries of charge beams, plasma cannons and lasers opened up, blue-green trails sketched in the air. The rocket exhausts filled the sky, a false dawn out of the wood etchings of the medieval Catholic church as the flames lit up the sky.

Had it not been for Asherah, who had slagged most of the defences to the east in its approach, and the more generalised damage that Eshmun and its spawn had done, it might have done something. Maybe.

The obelisk of night, almost invisible against the dome of darkness that now covered the city, arced actinic white light, from the rings that rotated around it. From the peak, where the five sides met, a sustained cutting beam eradicated the remnants of the fleet, and dug unnaturally smooth craters into the landscape of the city. From its vantage point, for the obelisk now reached almost two kilometres up, there was little that could not be targeted. A faint red glow emanated from the dark crystal, and the shallow arcology domes were sliced open, the guts of civilisation exposed for the world to see, before they too were unmade.

"Rerouting Unit 00," an Operator called out. "Point Alpha has been compromised by hostile fire."

The Major stared at the screen. Already the plan was imperfect; the casual damage done by the Harbinger had destroyed one of the entry chutes. She merely thanked that Unit 00 had been deep enough that they _had_ been able to do that.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Unit 00 slammed to a halt, faster than the equipment was designed to do, now exposed on the surface. The metal of the launch cradle shrieked, and with a faint hiss of coolant, the Evangelion stepped free of its cradle, hull-plating shield already raised. All around it, cascades of dummy drones were being launched into the air, adopting erratic patterns simply designed to ensure that the Harbinger took the longest possible time for its death-brining beams from target to target. Against the black void which Mot was generating, the beams were precisely geometrical, and blindingly white.

A yellow light on the internal wall of the entry plug turned green, and Rei Ayanami triggered the plasma turret which had been bolted to her left arm. The recoil from the relativistic particle beam kicked at her arm, but she compensated, holding it as steady as she could on the lowest ring that spun around the obelisk-shape of the hostile.

The fractured radiance of an AT-Field was all that she got for her efforts, and she cut the beam, stepping to the left, behind an armoured building, as the Harbinger retaliated. The lesser beam scored its way across the armour plating, across the hastily raised shield, which shimmered with a sudden heat haze.

"External," Rei ordered her LITAN; a single, terse word. Her internal D-Engines cut their power, and suddenly sluggish, she stepped again further to the left, to avoid the falling building. The metal superstructure of the armoured structure, now exposed, was not even glowing. It had been cut, as if it were clay and the beam a sharp knife. That property was not so inaccurate, as the building that fell warped and deformed, sagging and deflating, as it were suddenly more akin to jelly.

The Harbinger appeared satisfied. Something had tried to strike at it, something which housed within it foetid wounds in reality. It had taken actions against the source. The wounds had disappeared. Hence, the insect was dead.

Simple.

Slowly, sluggishly, Unit 00, now running exclusively from the power cable and its batteries, stepped around to the next designated firing point. It was not designed to run off an external feed, and without power, the armour was heavily locked down. Nevertheless, it could be done, because some genius in its design process had decided that this was something it should be able to do.

The first component of its mission was now complete. They now knew how long it took the Harbinger to acquire an Eva-sized target with whatever senses it used.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The peak of the obelisk flared again and again. The Victoria Arcology, still damaged from the Asherah incident, took a direct hit, as it opened up with a barrage of fresh missiles. The force of the impact reduced the man-made mountain of steel to a volcano, molten metal cascading down its slopes and burning through armour plating and weapon batteries, and the shockwave sent the just-launched missiles tumbling off course. It was a sudden, shocking source of red light in the whiteness of the Harbinger's beams, and the adamantine fracture of its AT-Field, flaring afresh whenever a weapon would attempt to violate it.

"Its AT-Field," Ritsuko muttered, to herself. "It's almost as strong as..." she blinked. "No," she whispered. "Misato!" she called out. "It weakens its AT-Field to fire! The beams... they're extensions of it. We have to keep it firing! No matter what!"

"I understand," the Major said, her jawline set, as she stared at the sweeping, overlapping arcs on the surface, which were systematically wiping away the decoy-chaff. Unit 00 couldn't go back to internal power sources, not in these conditions; it was a mercy that it hadn't been hit by incidental fire. "Operators! Maintain the decoy density! _Do you know where the core is?_"

"Nearly there," Lieutenant Aoba said, from his seat. "I'm getting the readings from the Operators, and..."

"It's... it's moving!" Maya blurted, over the speakers. "Up and down. We've isolated its energy signature, and... those rings? That's why they're only firing at certain points. It has to be nearby, we think, for them to do it!"

"Of course!" Ritsuko said, sudden, horrified comprehension on her face. "It's growing downwards, in a way which means it never has to expose its core, or even let us know where it is!

"Can you isolate the movement!" the Major hissed.

A pause, then;

"Yes! Yes! There it is!" A small red dot, bouncing up and down the multikilometre spire with terrifying rapidity, its motions inertialess, was added to the diagram.

And then Misato grinned, a shark-like grin. "Got ya," she said to the representation of the Harbinger on the screen.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Okay, Shinji," the Operator's voice said, in his ear, the _amlaty_'s modulated tones replacing the normal mechanical flatness of his LAI. "We have a firing position. We're going to move you there, now." She paused. "Remember, pulling the trigger at your end only announces that you're ready to fire. The system won't do it until it's ready."

"Yes. I know," the boy said. It was the only reason that he was willing to do this at all, after Misato had explained that they would, in fact, be mounting a nuclear bomb, with some kind of magic on it, into his Eva's chest cavity. A space which, it should be noted, was rather close to his entry plug. It would only fire when it detected that the AT-Field was shaped properly to reinforce the warding. He swallowed, the LCL tasting almost... perfumed, a sort of minty, floral taste, in the funny, cold way he felt. It was certainly an improvement, he thought; much more comforting. And less horrible. "I'm ready."

"Then hold on tight." The lieutenant paused. "But not too tight."

The acceleration kicked in, pushing him back into his seat.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

In the bunker, filled mostly with the staff of Armourcorp, and other employees of the subsidiaries of the Chrysalis Corporation, the bomb hidden in package ZZA9WYA923Q did what it was designed to do.

The modified vECF shell, salvaged after the Asherah operation, initiated, with the explosive force of about a tonne of TNT. Local casualties were high; something made worse by the arcanochromatic elements used in the fusion-catalysis.

And each action has ramifications.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The first thing that Shinji knew of anything wrong was when the Eva-cradle derailed, slamming into the side of the wall and kicking up a shower of sparks which fell, cascading down the chute, as Unit 01 dug into the metal walls. He yelped, in sudden pain, and reflexively threw out a hand, to steady himself; the Eva mimicked the gesture, and one vast hand smashed into the wall. In the confusion, the failsafes kicked in, and the blast doors closed underneath the Unit, just in time for it to fall. They were straining under the incredible mass of the Evangelion, but just holding. There was a hiss of fire extinguisher systems, as flames and smoke burst from the damaged sections of the tunnel, only to be smothered.

"What just happened!" the Major asked, face suddenly pale.

"Derailment!" Lieutenant Makota reported. "Reports coming in, explosions all over the city. Multiple blasts in evacuation bunkers."

"One's flagged as right by the chute Unit 01 is in!" added Aoba.

The Major's eyes narrowed. "Cultists," she said, immediately, with disgust. "Bastards." With a force of will, her voice was professional once again. "Find an alternative route!"

"On it!"

"This is bad," Ritsuko said to her, softly.

"Yes."

"What... argh... urgh, what happened?" Shinji asked, his face appearing on the main screen.

"I've got a new route," an Operator called out. "Down one level, then we can run parallel."

"Get a new cradle in position!" Misato ordered. "Shinji, it was a derailment," she told the boy, who was looking even paler than normal. "Don't worry. We have everything under control."

"Don't worry? Don't worry!" the boy shouted back, an edge of hysteria in his voice. "You're not the one with the nuclear bomb in your chest, who's going to have to use a... a magic field to stop it blowing yourself open! Things aren't meant to go wrong when things are like this!"

"No," Misato replied, trying not to grit her teeth. "They aren't. Be prepared for a small drop, brace yourself against the wall. We're going to close the next blast door, and then open the one below you. As long as you lower yourself onto it, you won't fall." She glanced over at Ritsuko, who nodded. "Lieutenant Cheung will guide you."

"And how do you know that isn't going to go wrong, too?" he continued, the hysteria growing. "The metal is making bad sounds, and... and everything is going wrong, and..."

"Shinji." Gendo Ikari's voice was cold, efficient. "Accidents happen. Follow your orders."

On the screen, the boy could be seen to grit his teeth, his emotions flickering between anger, shock, and dislike. "Yes," he said, eventually, taking a deep breath of LCL. "Okay."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Hands tight around the control yokes, her hands working as she forced the lumbering, power restricted Eva to move, Rei Ayanami's eyes constantly flickered over the mess of windows and data-feeds that she kept open. Compared to the simple, mostly-automated displays of Unit 01, designed for its untrained pilot, her entry plug was a mess of lights and information.

Moving the reticule onto the Harbinger, she emptied a barrage of fly-like missiles from a shoulder pod. The empty container crashed down onto the ground, bouncing and crushing an empty, abandoned car. That was the most damage it did, because the AT-Field merely flared into adamantine life as the flock approached, where they harmlessly burst. Even the arcanochromatic taint was doing nothing against the integrity of the AT-Field; the soul of Mot was proof against such blemishes.

"Internal 1," Rei said, her voice chilly.

Deep within the Eva, a single D-Engine awoke, sending a fresh jolt of power into the Eva's veins, to supplement the trickle from the external source. It was a risk, yes, but she was still 'smaller' than many of the other targets. And with the sudden agility it afforded, she was able to duck under the white cutting beam that lunged for her, catching its back-sweep on the shield, and bursting into motion, as she relocated. Too soon, it was necessary that the engine be cut again.

She had been playing this game with it, slowing it down, letting it see a hint of her AT-Field, before fleeing its wrath. Representative Ikari had ordered her to slow it down, after all.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The replacement catapult vessel slowed, much more carefully than before, and with a commiserate lack of derailments.

[Eva 01 is in place.]

"Alignment verified... checked! Hostile core status?"

"Moving, but we have it tracked. We're feeding the data to the Eva!"

Eva 01 was deep underground, stationed in the tunnels which they normally used to move the Evangelions to the surface, up from the Geocity ten kilometres below the surface. Now, it was a mere kilometre above the Geocity, and the shaft of the Harbinger had already passed it. These tunnels were now the frontlines where the Unit would fight, for the core moved along the full length of the obelisk. The extrusion of the Harbinger into reality was horrifically fast, unnaturally so, and seemed to show no care at all for little things like "conservation of mass".

"Rotate... okay, microadjustments done," the Operator whispered to Shinji. "You can start."

The boy took a deep, deep breath, of this cold, strange-tasting LCL, and felt himself slide slightly deeper into the Eva.

_Think._

_Think of the shape. Form the AT-Field._

_Think._

_Think of everyone. Form the AT-Field._

_Think._

_Think of killing the Harbinger. Form the AT-Field.  
__  
Think._

The air in front of the Eva began to boil, glowing and writhing and thrashing, strange bubbles of light popping as Shinji Ikari began to force the very fabric of reality to the shape he desired.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"It's not forming right!" Ritsuko barked. "He doesn't have fine enough control to get it tight enough. Even with the AT-Field weakened, it won't be a kill."

"Just give him time," Misato said, her hands clutched to her chest. "We trusted him enough to drag him back like this, after it almost killed him. After it did kill him. He chose to get in that thing, and I explained the risks of what he was doing." Her face hardened. "I _believe_ in Shinji."

A pause.

Gendo leant forwards, pushing his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. The overlays on the spectacles suggested that he was looking at a more detailed version of the main screen. "No," he said, simply. "Move him to the surface. He will be closer. It will work."

"But..." Ritsuko began. _That's suicide_, was what the scientist didn't say. "It'll detect the AT-Field for sure, and he'll be defenceless while trying to shape it."

"That seems... unwise," the Major agreed. "He's close. He can do it."

"You said you believed in him," Gendo said, eyes hidden. "Then believe in him when he is on the surface, and in effective range. The Harbinger must be killed."

Misato twirled around. "Sir," she said, her voice utterly professional. "Prepare for Eva redeployment... Shinji, we're going to move you closer, to try and..."

"High energy reaction in the target!"

"What?" Ritsuko snapped. "It's seen him! It's seen the AT-Field!"

"Emergency move!" Misato ordered, slamming one hand into a button. "Shinji! Drop that AT-Field right now! Cut all internal power to Unit 01! Get it moving!"

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

But on the surface, Rei Ayanami was already moving. With a flat "Internal 9," all of the Prototype's D-Engines kicked into full, screaming activity. Sudden power hit the Unit; power and more, because she had not ejected the external supply. A word was all that was needed to dedicate that exclusively to the weapon crudely attached to her left arm. And she was off, gloved hands fastened around the controls, pale face in a rictus of concentration, as she forced the Eva into motion, despite her poor synchronisation ratio.

"Override power lockdowns," she said, simply. "Maximise energy consumption, autonomous weapons are free."

Feet pounding against the ground and tearing it up, she leapt over the trench of what had once been a superheavy charge beam installation, and now was nothing more than a crater, which punched a hole in the top of a buried arcology dome. Stumbling upon landing, the white-painted Unit nonetheless managed to retain balance, even as its path led it through several apartment complexes, and it came to a sliding halt, knee drawing a line of sparks, close to the Harbinger. Its lesser weapons, the remaining missiles and rockets and laser turrets, were already firing, the blue beams visible through the dust that her motion had kicked up.

Within her plug, Rei closed her eyes, and raised the shield welded to her handless right arm, bracing for the impact that she knew would come. The plasma turret on her left arm was already firing, spewing burning sun-matter at the Harbinger. Her plug suddenly jolted down, her synch-ratio spiking before settling at a higher level.

She was not surprised by the attack. She never was. And in this case, she had gone out of her way to draw its attention.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Again, Unit 01 was kicked into too-sudden motion, heading vertically upwards. Looking down, Shinji just saw a white beam cut through the rocks, through the armour plating, through the base earth, to where he had been, seconds before, before the blast doors slammed shut, to the sound of rapidly dopplered alarms.

The boy whimpered into the LCL, one hand going to his chest despite the crushing force of the acceleration. That had been close. Far, far too close. The pain of the beams cutting into him, last time, were his only truly clear memory of the last fight.

"Shield integrity failing!"

"AT-Field weakening! Pilot attunement is dropping and destabilising, One-Two fluctuations in 3-RT channel detected!"

"Shinji! Shinji!" Misato's face appeared before him, to the sound of hubbub in the control room. "Surface! Fire!"

"What?" He blinked, his hand forced back to the controls. "But I..."

"Loss of external power source. Unit 00 is running on Internals."

"You can do it! You will do it! Understand? Shinji," the woman said, a slight dampness around the corners of her Eyes, "we've put everything into this. You chose to pilot. You've already killed two of them. Make it three for three, okay?"

Above them, the night-black crystal met the outer layers of the Geocity.

"Energy probe is attacking G1," Lieutenant Makota yelled. "G1 is pierced! G2... G3! G3 has fallen... G4!"

"We're all counting on you," Misato said, finally.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The warning sirens which told of the Evangelion chute opening were useless, screaming into a night where there were none to hear it, and where they were drowned out by the conflict. But, still, the sirens sounded and the red warning lights illuminated the street, as the 50 metre cradle came up, directly facing the Harbinger. The ground around it warped and crumbled, as the AT-Field, already forming in front its chest, began to glisten and sparkle in the air.

Shinji slammed his fist into the side of the plug wall, into the red button they had installed to indicate readiness, and stared up at his foe, the overlay of the association-image merging with the Harbinger. It truly was a monster now; maybe a hundred metres wide, but reaching three kilometres into the air, and all the way down to the Geocity, with only a slight bulge at ground level showing what it had once been. It was a needle fit for the Norns to use, one through which the threads of fate might be woven.

But all that was irrelevant, because the totality of its firepower, the totality of its will was focussed on one thing. The white shape of Unit 00, was, according to his overlays, somewhere in the middle of that apocalyptic display of firepower, with only the hull plating of an all-too-feeble human ship, the kind that it might trivially slice through, between it and the terrible light.

The plume of light from Unit 01's chest grew stronger and brighter, a cone-like shape composed of distorted, warped, and yet perfect concentric circles. Through it, things were seen warped and distorted and... other, off in ways both tangible and intangible, similar and dissimilar.

"Yes!" shouted Ritsuko. "He's done it! It's... it's nearly perfect!"

And that was when the light of the Harbinger ceased, and it swelled and bulged, pulling all the darkness back into itself. The spire shrunk, grew anaemic and withered, as for once, for the last time, Mot grew fully aware of what it faced, of the death that came for it.

[Energy Reaction Detected]

[Warning! AT-Field exceeds mission parameter!]

"No!" Misato yelled. "No, damn you!"

The void-dark blossom of the Harbinger, bloated and imperfect, widened, as it drew in more of its stuff. And Shinji who, a trickle of blood leaking from his nose, was holding the AT-Field ready, saw reflected in its depths, so many lights, all aimed for him from the barbs of crystal now growing down its front.

Something shrieked.

And it was almost an entire second before Shinji realised that it wasn't him.

Behind it, now ignored, Rei Ayanami slashed again at the Harbinger, the fused, melted remnants of the shield her weapon of choice. Like an axewoman, she beat repetitively at the base, her AT-Field flaring around the crude, improvised weapon, and with each slash, barbs of crystal came flying out, inexorable cutting at the very root of the Harbinger.

It shrieked again, a pure, beautiful note of agony, and perhaps instinctively recoiled.

That weakening was seen by the sensors on Unit 01. It was all the excuse they needed.

The LANCE prototype initiated. Hydrogen fused with hydrogen into helium, the energy released to force more such reactions. Energy equal to five hundred kilotonnes of TNT was released, radiating out on straight lines. But thanks to the AT-Field, and thanks to the cruder human sorceries layered onto the bomb, what might have seemed straight was, to the rest of the world, curved.

In a tiny fraction of a second, a nuclear blossom grew within Unit 01's chest, within the AT-Field, before, in a perversion of nature, growing out into the stem.

And through the entry way, it hit the two Harlequin samples crudely added, to make this a wonderfully Colourful weapon.

The cone of unnatural light, five metres across by the time it reached the AT-Field of the Harbinger and still ensheathed in Unit 01's soul, punched straight through. Punched straight through the AT-Field, punched straight through the crystal, punched straight through the core, and left cleanly through the other side.

Mot gave a noise which was not quite a shriek, and was silent for evermore.

In the silence that followed, as normal night returned, and rain began to fall from the violated clouds, the sound of Unit 00 collapsing was terribly loud.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Standing on a rooftop, on one of the few buildings intact in the area, a man laughed. Vast giggles shook his body, contorting it, as tears flowed from his face freely. His parted lips revealed shining white teeth, and one bare foot, coal-black, quite deliberately crushed the glass of wine he had dropped, letting his crimson blood mix with the spilled drink.

"Wonderful!" he screamed into the night, though laughter. "Magnificent! Simply... wonderful!"

The rain that fell burned the coruscating, phosphorescence of the Colour Out of Space.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Rei!" Shinji yelled, at the fallen Eva. "Rei!"

The white-armoured Eva was down. Its armour, once white, was now nothing more than metal and blackened, scorched ceramic. The left arm was even more heavily damaged, and the shield which had been on the right arm, and which had seen use as a weapon, was torn off completely. Compared to that, Unit 01 seemed to be in a good state of repair, even with the hole in its chest, and the faint arcanochromatic patina of dust.

He had to get her out of there.

With force, he pried open the ruined back of the Evangelion, carefully, as if holding something young and vulnerable, cradling as he laid it down on the ground. Closer examination, though, revealed that the plug had already ruptured.

That was bad, Shinji knew.

Very bad.

Frantically, he scrabbled in the equipment pod for the facemask he needed to wear until his lungs were emptied of LCL; the one that Dr Akagi had called, with a chuckle, the Eva EVA Equipment. It snapped cleanly onto his cowl, the metamorphic material sealing itself, and it was a matter of moments to shrug on the backpack with the LCL supply; moments which, to Shinji, seemed like an eternity.

And then he was out of the Eva, ignoring the command staff completely, and running through the phosphorescent rain which streaked down his facemask, and painted the orange-tinted world in strange colours. Yes, the entry plug was ruptured, right at the end, the metal torn. Clambering onto it, he could feel the heat through the blood-slicked surfaces, but it could be tolerated. He found a hole large enough that he could bend the metal out of the way, and, yelping as it sliced through the palm of his plug suit, bent it out of the way. He didn't even notice how the plug suit sealed itself up afterwards. Clambering through the hole, ignoring the pain in his hands from the sharp, burning-hot metal, he stared at the girl, who lay, unmoving, head slumped. LCL pooled around her legs, but she didn't...

"Hold on!" he shouted, yanking open the equipment capsule, to retrieve her transparent mask. With much more care, he knelt beside her, and sighed into the LCL as it clicked back into position, noting as he did that he felt much more normal. Much more normal, and as if all the sleep he felt he was owed was being called in all at once.

"Ayanami! Rei? Are you... are you all right? Are you okay?" he tried again, once he saw that the air bubbles were no longer there, which meant that she was breathing the LCL properly.

Raising her head slightly, two grey eyes stared back at him, almost quizzically. And for some reason, Shinji found that incredibly funny, and began to laugh, great heaving sobs, which left him doubled up.

"Ikari? Are you all right?" Rei echoed, looking at him with something which approached concern.

"There's... there's more to life, to stuff, to... to everything than what is _necessary_," Shinji burbled, relief and exhaustion flooding his system in equal amounts. "And... and don't ever, ever say 'goodbye' like that. It's not going to be a goodbye." Behind the transparent mask tears leaked into the LCL, tiny spheres of saline water which quickly dispersed into the fluid. "Not... not if I... I... can..." he faded away into incoherency.

Eyes widening slightly, Rei straightened up, her head no longer lolling. "Why do you cry?" she asked, voice distorted slightly by the fluid that still filled her lungs. "You are not in pain."

Shinji sniffed, and went to wipe his nose, only for his hand to brush against the faceplate. "I kn-know," he managed. "I'm not crying because... because I'm sad. It's because I'm happy." He smiled then, a faint, watery grin. "And so should you be."

"I should be crying?" Behind the faceplate, wide eyes blinked. "I am sorry. I don't know how to express myself in this kind of circumstance."

"You should be happy." He took a teetering step forwards, as the adrenaline wore off and the bone-deep fatigue returned, leaning against the heated plug wall, and recoiling from it with a yelp. "We're both alive, and the Harbinger isn't, and... you were amazing, and..." he chuckled, even through the tears, "...you should smile more."

Two grey eyes focussed on the face before them, focussed on the jaw line and the cheekbones and the shape of the face, at the way that the corners of his lips turned up and the crinkles around the corners of his eyes, comparing them to those of the boy's father. Slowly, awkwardly, Rei's face distorted, muscles moving in a way that they were not quite used to, and she too smiled.

With a burbling chuckle, Shinji collapsed, sagging at the knees. The exhaustion, induced by his death and rebirth, and postponed by medication and adrenaline, surged back, and the sweet nepenthe of rest took him. The LCL pooled at the bottom of the entry plug splashed with his impact, dripping back down the walls.

There was an expression of faint concern on Rei's face, as she stared down at the sleeping boy. With a wince, the girl sat upright, and with unusual care and hesitancy, leant forwards, to stare down at him. Her lips twitched, and she smiled again, no less awkwardly than the first time, as she reached down to place one gloved hand against his cowled head.

Outside, the tainted rain, burning in terrible phosphorescence, cascaded down, running over ruined buildings and leaching the colour from them, to pool and flow in rivulets down abandoned streets. It poured in sheets off the darkness of the corpse of the Harbinger, the dark tower that now reached into the sky, bringing light to the darkness, and through the single hole punched straight through it. It dripped and ran down the two abandoned Evangelions, marking their damaged armour with streaks of grey. The world seemed to shimmer in this light, as if all things were one in this opalescent, coruscating glow.

And through the holes in the clouds, torn asunder through the violence of the conflict, the nearly-full moon shone down in whiteness upon the world, wearing a tainted rainbow as a halo.

* * *

~'/|\'~


	14. Chapter 13: Rei 02, And Then Silence

**Chapter**** 13**

**Rei 02: And Then Silence / which in our feeble tongue would come in this like accenting**

**ENTELECHY**

* * *

~'/|\'~

_

* * *

She was a very disturbed child. Terrible, debilitating nightmares. Hallucinations. Hysteria. She never had a chance at a normal life._

Harlan Wade  
"Case Notes: Subject [REDACTED]"

* * *

~'/|\'~

**

* * *

3rd of October, 2091**

Rei Ayanami opened her eyes, and took a deep breath.

A pause. A second breath.

Beside her, the alarm chimed, as it hit 06:00.

The girl ignored the alarm, and stared up at the blank white ceiling, untouched by the scribbled text that covered the walls. She did not blink as the artificial light of the arcology streamed in through the window.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"_Good morning, this is EBO 4, and this is the six o'clock News on Sunday, the third of October. You're listening with me, Felicia Andrews, and with my co-host, Omina Ominumadeski va Garameta."_

_"This morning's headlines; the top story remains the aftereffects of the successfully repelled extra-normal incursion against London-2. Casualty figures are still coming in, but remain lower than expected, with the success in minimising attributed to the prompt evacuation. Nevertheless, the damage is widespread, with many of the surface arcologies and upper layers having suffered heavy damage. The Senator for Region 11, Japan, Kikunae Esaki, and Chair of the Committee on Urban Defence told us 'The overall integrity of London-2 as a Fortress City remains strong, although __some population relocation will be needed while repairs are made.'"_

_"We are waiting for a formal statement from the NEGA, and Grid communications from and to London-2 remain highly restricted. However, all the evidence suggests that hostile forces were comprehensively eradicated, with no survivors. The hostile extra-normal entity spearheading the attack appears to have been unaffiliated with the Migou, Dagonites, or the Storm, and its death should mark the end of this threat. But with this, the third attack on London-2 in a number of months, we ask; is a new front opening up in the Aeon War?"_

_"In other news, the Migou forces conducting a widescale offensive across the Eastern European Front have been pushed back, with minor gains for NEG forces in some regions of the counterattack. The assault, a broad push, was stopped, with minimal use of tactical ANaMiNBC weaponry, and appears to have been, according to the Army, a test of defences, called off when the hostiles were unable to find a weak spot."_

_"And later in the programme, polls indicate that the popularity of the Nyanda administration has fallen slightly, down to 41%, with repeated criticisms from Unionists, that she has failed to carry through on the reforms that she ran on, while Federalist groups bemoan the latest removal of Regional rights. Meanwhile, with the discovery of new gold reserves in Africa, we take a look at how this will affect the price of your nanofactory refills."_

_"Today's newsreader; Sasany vy Harmoky."_

_"Thank you. The news is dominated by the effects of the third wide-scale breaches of the defences of the British Isles, the northern part of Region 33, in as many months. The assault, however, unlike previous ones, came from the south and east, first detected at Nova Prokharov, and cutting across Region 34. Pictures have not yet been released, but official NEG releases state that the hostile ENE was a large, crystalline entity, akin to a battleship, and that moreover, it was not Migou. According to Field Marshal Jameson, of the European Triumverate, 'The simultaneous Migou assault appears to have been a coincidence, and the ENE was observed to engage Migou forces in combat. We can reassure you that this was not, I repeat, was _not _some new kind of Migou superbattleship, capable of breaking through the lines.' Propaganda broadcasts issued by Migou-loyal forces, in contested areas support this observation, although the evidence is still under examination..."_

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

There was a crack in the bathroom mirror, a small, hairline fracture that splintered up the side, right in the corner. Clouds of steam drifted out from the shower, condensing in the chill, the air currents suddenly made visible, and leaving streaky lines on the glass.

_Certainty._

A white figure stepped out of the shower, eyes shut, water dripping off her onto the floor where it pooled. Bare feet slapped against the cold floor, as a towel was obtained, and she placed it like a shawl over her shoulders.

Rei Ayanami did not look at herself in the mirror, even though, without sight, she reached out, and touched the crack, fingers running up and down its length.

_Imperfection. It is flawed, but it can still serve its purpose._

She stood before the mirror, naked. She opened her eyes, and stared into the misted surface, her expression twisting for a moment into a simulacra of a smile, before returning to normal.

_But functionality does not discount imperfection._

Stepping into her slippers, which were incongruously baby-blue, and had once been fluffy, she headed through to the kitchen, littered with rubbish and discarded food boxes, to retrieve the dried cubes of protein and carbohydrates which were to be her breakfast.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Doctor Akagi was still in her office when Misato walked in. The scientist was mussed, unwashed, her hair a mess and deep bags under her eyes. Discarded mugs littered the table.

"All right," the black haired woman asked tersely, "the last time you slept was?"

"I caught a few hours some time yesterday. About midday," Ritsuko replied, not looking up. "And I took two hours off last night." She paused. "I had to wait for teams to finish the damage reports on Units 01 and 02. No time to sleep, though."

Misato's eyebrows raised. "That's what I came in to talk to you about," she said, pulling up a chair, and propping her chin on the back. "Specifically the estimates."

"Look, I can't do anything to speed it up," Ritsuko said, in a dead monotone. "As I have told several other people." She sighed, slumping down to her elbows. "Unit 01 is out of operation for _at least_ two weeks. It has a giant hole in its chest, and, in case you don't remember, we stuck a nuclear bomb in there."

Misato indicated that, yes, she did remember.

"A nuclear bomb with... oh, where was the exact number? Yes, of the order of ten to the five discrete wards of at least Barret-level." She blinked, and for once turned off her harcontacts, pulling out the cable from behind her ear, as she leant back. "They caused a massive, but localised, distortion in the Weyl-Ricci-Xi tensors, and..." she shook her head, trying to explain, "they wrecked large amounts of the containment systems in the Eva. It's going to take multiple man-years of trained sorcerers to reward... uh, that's re-ward, not reward... and repair 01 properly, and we have to do some of them before we can let the Unit regrow." She made a disgusted noise. "Some of those wards have been there since the thing was first built."

"Oh." Major Katsuragi's mouth was a hollow circle. "I thought..."

"No, if only it was just an issue of just regrowing the flesh," the blonde sighed. "It makes Unit 00 look easy."

"Yeah, that makes sense. I was wondering why you were prioritising Unit 00 like that, because they don't look that differently damaged. But..." she shook her head. "We don't have any active Evas," she said, softly.

"We can get you Unit 00 back online and functional, if not optimal, in 4 days," the scientist said. "It'll still be missing a hand, but we're growing a new one, and most of the damage is either to the armour, or is tissue damage. We have a small surplus of the Type-A armour that the Prototype was originally fitted with, so we're downgrading to that until we can get a proper Type-B set running. And the internal systems are fine." She tilted her head, letting it loll back. "Well, apart from the plug damage that the Third Child did," she added, acerbically. "I don't know what he thought he was doing."

Misato stared at her, blankly. "Rescuing the First Child?" she said, in a tone which was trying very hard not to suggest that her old friend was an idiot. And failing.

"Hah! Rei didn't need rescuing!" There was something which could have been annoyance, and could have been bitterness in that voice.

"Well. He wasn't to know that, was he?" continued Misato in the same tone of voice, before she, too, sighed. "Rits. You need sleep."

"I know." The blonde's voice was quiet, as she stared down. "But I have to get these authorisations done, because we need to get military-grade nanofac access from the NEGN for the replacement hull-grade breastplates. I can sleep after that."

She felt a hand on hers.

"I can do that," Major Katsuragi said. "I have the authority. And the Representative is in, for anything I can't." She gripped her friend's hand tighter. "I'm worried about you," she said.

"I know."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Removing the diagnostic sampler, Rei glanced at the reading on the digital display on the side. Carefully putting the cap back on the device, she placed it in the receptacle for medical waste she had been provided. Undoing the scrapelock on another box labelled MEDICATION TYPE-4A, she removed a white-capped syringe filled with an orange fluid, and folded back a tab of synthskin on her left arm, screwing the syringe into the port in exposed.

Her arm tightened for a moment, hand locking into a claw, and a small whimper escaping her lips, before she breathed out again. Unscrewing the now-empty syringe from the port, she put the now-red cap back on, and placed it back in the box she had removed it from. The girl took several deep breaths, and swallowed.

Raising her left hand before her, Rei stared at it, turning it over to watch dark traceries of veins and arteries exposed for a moment beneath her milky skin, before they vanished. Waggling her fingers, she stared at the way the tendons on the back of her hand contorted.

"Numbness," she stated, out loud, to the listening, watching LAI. "Senselessness. No feeling at all."

She let her arm fall.

"When the feelings return, it hurts. Why? Why paraesthesia? The sensation of ten thousand tiny pins violating the surface of the skin. Breaching barriers, demolishing walls. Pain. The body greets sensation with pain."

She blinked, heavily.

"Why?"

Suddenly, she tilted her head to one side, and in a blink of an eye was upright and already halfway across the room, towards the table in the kitchen. Another blink of an eye, and she was there, motionless.

Rei Ayanami blinked again, and picked up her PCPU with her right hand.

It rang, once, before she answered it.

"Representative Ikari," she said, her voice soft.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

It was early enough in the morning in Chicago-2 that, for Ryoji Kaji, it was still late at night. And the phonecall that dragged him out of bed was very unwelcome.

"Urgh," he grumbled, blinking in the lights which his muse had turned on to force him awake, "this better be important."

[Call is Priority Two, Ryoji. GIA override codes are valid.]

The man let out an incoherent groan, and rubbed his eyes against his bare arm. "Answer it," he ordered the muse. "It's Kaji."

The voice was far too awake for his tastes. "Agent Kaji," a young-sounding, male Nazzadi-accented voice stated. "We've had one of your subjects of interest show up dead."

The man coughed, a sudden expulsion of surprised air. "What?"

"Male, human, name of Charles Habegger. His corpse was found in a cargo container, evacuated from the Eastern European Front. Decomposed, but sealed, so there wasn't a smell. The file says the NEGA only found the body when they did a manual inventory check?"

Kaji shook his head. "Reanimated corpse?"

"Well... um, initial check suggests that he died about a week ago, and body shows no sign of reanimation... although large amounts of the flesh have been removed, apparently with a knife."

The man sucked in a breath. "Hmm." It was a single, flat noise. "Well, then I'll deal with it in the morning, unless there's a special reason I need to be there. Is he going to get deader?" he asked. "Anything special I need to know?"

"No, nothing that requires your presence."

"Then why was I woken?"

"Sir, you're the one who flagged it for a Priority Two alert." The junior agent's voice somehow managed to convey his annoyance at superiors who set up unnecessary warnings, only to ignore them, while still staying utterly professional.

Oh yes, Kaji remembered; yes, he had. He'd _meant_ to set it up so it was only if the man was found alive; obviously, that hadn't been conveyed. "Well, thank you," he said, out loud. "Receipt of message acknowledged. Goodbye."

The line disconnected, and the agent massaged his brow. He was too tired to deal with this right now, he thought, as he ordered his muse to shut off the lights again, and lay back down.

He fell asleep to the sound of water running, elsewhere in the temporarily assigned apartment.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The board at the station was flashing up with red, as maglev after maglev reported delays and disrupted services. All of the First and Second Circle lines, the two shallowest of the maglev loops, were down, and large areas of the upper reaches of the underground city were sealed off. The platform was packed, as people waited for the next inclinator carriage, to move vertically around the city. The layered carriages ran through a network of tunnels which were the forefathers of the Evangelion launch chutes, and which, in an emergency, could be used for that function.

Rei Ayanami waved the back of her hand at the sensor, and stepped through the turnstile, followed by several bulky individuals. Her school uniform, complete with black overcoat, stood out among the mess of brightly coloured, entopic-covered shirts and clothing of the populace. The girl stood silently in the midst of the babble and noise, which washed around her, the air slightly stiller, slightly colder, and almost unconsciously, the crowd parted around her.

A small child began to cry. The noise was lost in the hubbub.

Her arrival at the edge of the platform coincided perfectly with the chime over the announcement system, warning of an oncoming inclinator. With a hum, it entered the station, rising from the depths and pulling to a halt before the barriers and carriage doors opened. The white-haired girl stepped on board, surrounded by her bodyguards, who for some reason served to dissuade this carriage from being as tightly packed as it should have been.

Rei stared into nothingness as the inclinator began to rise again, ignoring the crowd and the bodyguards alike.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The clacking of a keyboard was the only noise in the room. Fingers running over buttons, eyes flicking to his other screens filled with reference materials, Kensuke Aida typed away.

There was a flashing icon in the bottom left, alerting him to a new conversation. He opened it.

[Toja]: heya

[MegaMechaMan]: hey

[Toja]: your up early.

Kensuke squinted at the clock in the corner of one screen, rubbing his eyes.

[MegaMechaMan]: Is it morning already.

[Toja]: yh... yeah. u know that. Its' int he corner of yur screen

[MegaMechaMan]: Someone's making a lot of typoes today.

[Toja]: so sue me.

The brown haired boy paused, and began to type again.

[MegaMechaMan]: Dear Toja,  
You are being issued with a formal summons, to face a court charge for excess types. It is held that on Sunday 3rd October, 2091, you did willfilly and deliberately do lots of typoes. I am writing on behalf of Kensuke Aida, who wants compensation equal to 500000000000000 Tn for the eye-pain incurred when reading stuff you wrote.  
Yours sincerely  
A. Lawyer

[Toja]: ...

[Toja]: ...

[Toja]: screw you

[MegaMechaMan]: haha

[Toja]: no, seriously. Hate you so much right wno.

[Toja]: *now

[Toja]: since youre being an arse about it

Kensuke smirked.

[MegaMechaMan]: "you're", not "your"

[Toja]: ...

The human boy massaged his eyes with his palms, and looked away from the screen. His windows were set to opaque, so even the artificial day-night cycle of arcology domes didn't exist for him. Nevertheless, he did feel rather tired right now. And it seemed that his dad hadn't made it home at all last night; Kensuke wasn't surprised. It wasn't as if he was ever _really_ home, but it was worse than usual, now. Apparently there had been a bunch of bombings at some bunkers at work, at the same time as the attack, and his father was still handing the aftereffects and the fallout.

A second notification pinged up, and he opened a second conversation window.

[Zidony]: Zy haridy

[MegaMechaMan]: Hey, Taly. /Za harida/ and all that : D .

[Zidony]: So you didn't log off at all today and yesterday at all, huh?

[MegaMechaMan]: nope

[Zidony]: thought so. Dedaka kicked me off at 2am... Queen yergusisisily is bitching about it again. She got dedaka to put in a house cutout... fuck her.

Kensuke cocked his head, and ordered his muse to pull up a fast-translate. Taly tended to sprinkle her sentences with Nazzadi words, and he wasn't exactly fluent, at more than the 'Hello my name is Kensuke I would like food how much would it be thank you' level which the educational system required.

[MegaMechaMan]: och

[MegaMechaMan]: *ouch

[Zidony]: anyway. Watching the AF broadcast?

[MegaMechaMan]: AF?

[Zidony]: So no.

[Zidony]: **./live**

[MegaMechaMan]: thanks.

[MegaMechaMan]: wonder what thay'll say, cough cough.

[Zidony]: *rolles eyes*

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Gloved hands resting on the desk before him, Gendo Ikari stared into the bright camera lights and the masses of journalists before him. His arglasses were mostly disabled, solely serving to shield his eyes from the glare, and he was wearing a pair of sofcontacts underneath. It would not be done to allow frame analysis to read the projections against the lens, after all. The man dismissed a slight twitch of irritation that he, of all people, was required to give this statement, and kept his expression professionally mask-like. The public relations experts had advised that it would be better for these words to come from the mouth of the European Representative, and, much as he disliked it, they were correct.

He cleared his throat.

"Ladies, gentleman," he began. "On the 30th of September, a hostile extra-normal entity made an incursion into reality in Eastern Europe. It was assigned the designation 'Mot'. The entity was not, from what can be discerned, of Migou, Dagonite, or Storm in origin."

He paused, for a moment, as the journalists stirred, a slight sussuration breaking his flow.

"The hostile made its way across Europe, attacking all targets which its path bought within visible range. I can confirm reports that the Ashcroft Foundation was called in to support New Earth Government forces, with elements of the Engel Group taking a lead among mechanised units which assaulted it. In addition, upon the request of the Army, additional assets of the Engel Group were released to support the wide-front assault on Army positions on the Eastern Front, against Migou testing probes. I have been informed by the European Army Triumvirate that their assistance was of great use."

Gendo paused, and tilted his head slightly, to the position that he knew would make the lenses almost opaque to the primary camera.

"I can also confirm reports that experimental Ashcroft prototype units were deployed to directly combat the hostile extranormal entity, due to the severity of the incursion. I cannot comment on the role played by these experimental units."

There was no need to comment on that. Those words, those hints which played on reports that the Foundation itself had arranged, would be enough.

"The experimental units, and their precise nature remains classified. Additional information will be released in the near future." He bowed his head slightly, letting the main camera see his eyes. "The Ashcroft Foundation finds the loss of life inflicted by the extranormal entity to be deplorable, and will be aiding the reconstruction and rebuilding efforts in London-2 to the best of its capacities."

He inclined his head, and stood.

"That is all."

Gendo Ikari stood up, and, to the uproar of the watching journalists, exited, stage left. He strode down the corridor, flanked by his bodyguards, as a makeup assistant ran a cloth over his face, wiping away the traces around his eyes and in the wrinkles on his face. He, eyes watering, slid the sofcontacts out, placing them in the cleaning fluid, and turned his glasses back on with a welcome sigh. Much as many people would have been surprised to find out, Gendo really hated wearing contacts. Striding down the corridor, he paused to accept a glass of water offered by one of his guards, and drank it, passing it back to the woman for it to be destroyed. A contact chimed, and he tapped the frame of the arglasses.

"It seemed to go well," Kozo Fuyutsuki said, his picture a static logo filling the left eye. "The press are information-starved, of course, but that was always the intent. They'll be reading to gorge themselves next week, won't they?"

"Yes. Have you finished implementing the changes we'll need when the Evangelion Group goes public?"

"On it." There was a smile in the older man's voice, as he added, "Dr Akagi will be pleased."

"Yes. Why would she not?"

"But will you be, Gendo?" There was an added twist to these words.

"It is no longer viable for it to remain covert. It should aid in securing other assets for the Group, too, and aid our strategic visibility."

"But that's a mixed blessing, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"That was rhetorical, Gendo." A sigh. "What would Yui say?"

The elder Ikari paused in his steps, and around him, the escorting team piled up slightly, from the sudden stop. "She would understand," was the reply. "She would agree." Gendo straightened up, from his slight stoop, and began to walk again. "I'm heading to the surface next, as on my itinerary. Rei will be accompanying me."

"So noted."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The white girl was waiting for him outside, where he had told her to wait, on time.

He expected nothing less from her.

"Rei," Gendo told her. "I will want a report from you on what you observe on this."

"Yes, Representative Ikari." The girl paused. "As you wish."

The man adjusted his glasses. "Ms Egger will be with me," he said. "Go to a different viewing section, but ensure that you observe her."

There was no response from the girl, but she nodded, once.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

In the early October sunlight, shining down from a barren blue sky, the full extent of the damage that Harbinger-5 had done to the city could be seen. Palls of ash still hung in the air, smears against the cloudless sky, and surfaces were covered in dust. Swathes of the aboveground parts of the city were simply levelled, radial lines projected from the line which Mot took to enter the city. The Victoria Arcology, already damaged in the fight against Harbinger-3, was simply _missing_ the top third of its pyramid. And everywhere, surfaces were streaked with grey, or smeared with white, now-hardened foam, which covered the sick iridescence of the Colour-contaminated sections.

But nothing compared to the kilometre high spire that now rose into the heavens, up from the centre of the city. The blackness was now wrapped in shrouding, yes, but it was there, present, a tombstone and corpse united. The staggered perimeters of gunships and larger vessels, patrolling endlessly, were like children's' toys compared to its monstrosity.

"It's astonishing, really," said Christina Egger, the Ashcroft Representative for Research, as she stood on the viewing platform, staring out over the city. "I saw the reports from Harbingers-3 and -4, but this... this is something else. And now it's dead."

Gendo said nothing. His glasses were set to opaque; behind them, his eyes were on the woman, not the view, as he sat.

"You did well, Ikari," she stated. "This is concrete proof of the value of the Evangelion Group."

"Were the last two Harbingers not proof enough?" he asked, rhetorically.

She laughed, and flicked her head. "No. Asherah was a mess for all concerned, your good self included, and Eshmun was not sufficiently... emphatic for many. After all, the Army had managed to blow it in half." Her expression twisted into a momentary sneer. "As if doing that to Eshmun was some great accomplishment."

There was silence, as the viewing platform banked slightly, circling around to the still-quarantined area where Unit 00 had been damaged.

The woman cleared her throat, one hand going up to tuck back her brown hair, and she opened her mouth to speak.

"Please, sit," Gendo said, with a nod of his head towards another chair. A smile crept onto his lips. "I'm straining my neck to look up at you."

She shot an irritated stare at him, before smiling back, and sitting. "Thank you," the Representative said. "How thoughtful." She cleared her throat again. "You know the real reason I'm here," Ms Egger said.

Representative Ikari sat back. "Yes," he said, a single, flat word. "Evangelions."

"Yes. The products of Project Evangelion, part of the Evangelion Group." Hands in her lap, she tilted her head, the corners of her lips twitching up.

"You bought it up at the meeting yesterday. I didn't not expect for you to physically visit." That was a lie. Gendo had expected her to do this, exactly. It was the next logical step for her, in the power plays which they had engaged in since she had become Representative for Research, seven years ago, in the aftermath of Berlin-2.

"We should dispose of the masks," the brunette said, eyes suddenly narrowed. "You know I know that you're only using Dr Akagi as a pawn, using her objections to keep Project Evangelion away from... well, I could list the people you'd want to keep it away from, but that would take rather a lot of time. More to the point, though, I know both Miyakame and Sylveste have expressed interest in aiding. You really should get over any bitterness you might have over how the original Project... dissolved, Ikari," she added, her voice like a barb.

There was a painful silence.

"What do you want, really?" Gendo said, voice like ice. "It is not merely the Evangelions. You have other interests."

"I might ask you the same question. What do _you_ want?" Her arglasses glittered blue, tinting her green-brown eyes, and her face grew slightly pink. "What I want? I want proper access to Project Evangelion. I want to see these incredibly capable combat machines mass-produced." She let a breath out, the intensity in her voice slightly scary. "I have seen the data from the Mass Production Unit and its pilot, seen its combat performance. I want a thousand of her and a thousand Evangelions. I want to see the Migou dead and scattered and _gone_, I want to see the cities of the Deep Ones melted into slag and their idols cast down, I want to see the only remnants of the monsters of the Storm to be the samples we deigned to keep for research." She sighed. "But, failing that, I want you to stop obstructing access to the Evangelions and their data so I can at least make some steps towards these goals."

Gendo said nothing, steepling his fingers before him. "Production is continuing at the 0343 facility, in Australia," he said, simply.

"Yes, I know that Unit 03 is being worked on, and... well, the limited assets of the Evangelion Group, compared to the cost of each Unit, really does show," the Representative for Research replied, tartly. "But... let's talk." She leant forwards, propping her chin on her palms, almost as if she were infatuated, any anger which she might have shown gone. "What would be needed to recover Unit 04?"

"Ah. I wondered when you were finally going to raise that topic," the man said, with no trace of amusement.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

It was silent in the back of the car, as it descended vertically, back down one of the A-Pod vehicle shafts that ran through the city, for the movement of smaller cargos and for those with the money and influence to afford an access pass. The man was reading something on his arglasses; the pale girl was focussed on him, only moving to blink.

Finally, he turned off his glasses, and looked back at her. "Rei?" It was a simple, short syllable.

"Your assumptions were correct, Representative Ikari."

The man's smile held no pleasure in it. "Thank you, Rei."

There was silence again, and Gendo sighed, and reached into a pocket, pulling out a chocolate bar, tearing open the wrapper. He snapped it in half, and offered part to the girl.

"Thank you, Representative Ikari," she said, taking the offered section, and nibbling at it. The man popped his half into his mouth, and as the peppermint flavour washed over his tongue, he paused to think. He had just set several things into motion, yes, and he needed to be calm. Representative Egger was good at getting under his skin, too. He had first met her on a flight back from Antarctica, in 2073, and she knew _enough_. Morosely, he wondered if it was because he, as a happily married man, had turned her down when she had tried to hit him on him, back then, and then dismissed such a hypothesis as ridiculous, as he had every time before that such an idea had come up. Their differing priorities, ambitions, and end-goals were more than enough to explain any dislike.

Glancing back at Rei, he noted as she licked her fingers, removing the discolouration of melted chocolate from the milk-white. She caught his gaze, and her mouth twitched. "Thank you for the books you sent me, Representative Ikari," she said. "They are interesting. Even if they are wrong in parts."

"You have noted the errors?"

"Yes, Representative. Thank you."

"Good girl."

"But..." She trailed off.

"Yes, Rei?" he asked.

The girl licked her lips, a pink tongue a sudden, unusual contrast, and paused. That alone was enough for him to pay more attention to her.

"Yes?" he said, again.

"Gendo Ikari," she said, voice softer than usual. "Shinji Ikari." She paused, both hands clasped behind her back. "Rei Ayanami."

The man stared at her.

"Gendo Ikari," she repeated. "Shinji Ikari." A blink. "Yui Ikari."

"Your point is, Rei?" he asked, face an expressionless mask.

"A three-body system is chaotic," she said, slightly louder. "It is deterministic, and yet you cannot predict its state at a future time."

Gendo froze, sliding down his glasses, to look at her with his unaugmented eyes. "Does Pilot Ikari disturb you, Rei?"

She blinked. "He is known."

"That does not answer my question." His gaze was steady.

Rei's flicked over his features. "He does not."

"He is your co-pilot, and has a duty to risk his life, as do you. Do not mistake compliance with duty for anything else. You will follow my instructions for interactions with him?"

"Yes." A blink. "It is necessary."

"Good girl."

There was an awkward silence, which stretched out.

"You do not wish for me to be present any more," Rei stated.

The man nodded, with only a slight narrowing of his eyes. There was no point in lying to her.

"I apologise if I have said anything wrong, Representative Ikari."

The rest of the journey passed in silence.

"I will have your record on my observations the next time I see you," Rei said, as she climbed out of the car. She turned around, and walked in a straight line towards the exit from this landing area, past the parked cargo haulers, stepping between automata-driven lifters, towards the Loughborough Dome, a mid-sized dome which connected to the Fifth Circle Line, where the bodyguards were already waiting. She would be able to make her way home from there, easily.

Once she had left, the man sighed, and picked up his PCPU to schedule an appointment with Dr Akagi for the girl today. This had been flagged as a potential problem once she successfully attuned to her Evangelion, and Gendo was a proponent of solving small possible problems before they became large, real ones.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"To think, I'd only just managed to move out and get away from you lot," Kodamy grumbled, an exasperated faint smile nonetheless still on her lips. She paused for a moment, hefting the crate in her arms slightly, before continuing onwards.

Behind her, Hikary frowned. "It's only for a short while," she reassured her sister. "I'm sure they'll..."

"Hik, I'm not worried. Vaguely annoyed about the commute, yeah, but the uni's paying for the 'lev, so... yeah." She groaned, shaking her head. "More pissed off about the stuff I lost, really. Well, that and the fact that Dad's going to be putting severe cramps on my social life." She snorted. "I can hear you disapprove, little sis."

"I am not disapproving," said Hikary, who in fact was doing so, quite strongly.

"Uh... okay. I believe you."

"You're saying that in a not-believing voice," the pigtailed girl said, putting her own bag down with a sigh, as she massaged her fingers, and then put her left hand in place for its microchip to be read and a skin-scraping taken.

"Well, you know. I'm a medical student," Kodamy said, with a smirk and a flick of her long black hair, as she placed her hand in. "I am, legally obliged, to get hideously drunk, cut back on sleep so I can get reports done, and have as much promiscuous sex as possible. All at the same time." The light turned green, and the two sisters headed through.

Hikary giggled.

"Made you laugh."

"Kodamy, you can do what you want." The younger girl smiled. "I just think that, you know, being more upset about the effects on your social life from your halls being blown up than about your halls being blown up is kind of... odd. You knew that Dad didn't want you taking the halls on the surface."

"Cheaper. And not really more dangerous."

"But they actually got destroyed!"

"Hey," Kodamy said, looking vaguely offended. "They're not destroyed. They're just... like, permanently contaminated with a-chrom stuff so they have to be demolished."

"_So_ much better."

"I was technically correct, though," the older girl said, with a smirk. "The _best_ kind of correct." She leant over, to rub her hair against her sister's head. "Don't tell me you were worried about me," she added.

"Well... yes. We weren't _sure_ you'd evaced deep enough." Hikary shrugged, a gesture hampered by the bags, her lips twisting slightly. "Plus, you know, Dad making me go along to help you carry the replacement stuff you had to get? That's not fun. I _was_ planning to do something today," she said, archly, as they stepped through the entranceway to their housing, the gurgle of water running over the rocks, suddenly audible. "You could have waited for the nanofac to make some of these stuff, instead of getting me to carry it. I mean, did you really need..." she glanced down into the bag, "... a new bunch of cutlery?"

"I bought you the skirt, didn't I, with my hard-earned free-money-from-the-Foundation student grant. I don't know what else you want apart from bribery."

Hikary snorted. "A good point, well made." She noticed her younger sister sitting on a bench reading, her white hair a veil hanging over her face. An orb of white light was floating over her shoulder, orientated down towards the text. "Nozomy," she called out. "Come help, would you please?"

"I'm reading!" her little sister called back, not even looking up.

"I don't care. I had to go help Kodamy carry all this from Blackstone Dome, and the 'levs are a nightmare. You can help at least a little bit."

"_Fine!_" the 13-year old snapped, slamming her reader down, and letting the light disperse.

"Don't do that!"

"Oh, so you don't want me to help," Nozomy said, sulkily. "Why'd you bother, then?"

"No, don't treat your reader like that." Hikary took a breath. "You know very much what I meant, and... really, is a little bit of helping bad?"

"'You could have done it in the time you spent mucking around and delaying'," the sidocy said, deliberately mimicking her sister's tone.

"That's _my_ line. So, please, Nozomy, help. Or I'll tell Dad."

"There's no need to be so bossy all the time!"

"I'm not bossy! You just don't do anything to help around the house!"

Kodamy left out a breath, and glanced around the garden-space, an inner courtyard around which their house wrapped, which bloomed with exotic and genemodded plants. "Ah, family," she said, loudly. "I never knew how so _very_ much I'd miss it until it wasn't around any more."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

And once again, Shinji Ikari was staring up at the ceiling of the hospital. It was getting remarkably familiar. The idea that he just move in here permanently had occurred to him. To the extent that he had also suggested it to Misato, when she had come to both congratulate and apologise to him; that had prompted a weak chuckle. That was not to say that Misato had not been his only visitor, of course. There had been plenty of appearances from medical staff and his assigned psychiatrist, and there had been questioning about how it had felt to be clinically dead. When he had told them all he could remember, it had been explained that randomly firing neurones produced anomalous images, which, combined with a precipitous fall in core temperature and that he had been immersed in LCL, explained everything. In his opinion, that had been a little lacking in sympathy. But he hadn't wanted to say anything, so hadn't.

His father had not visited. Shinji had not seen him, even through the observation window.

Now, though, it was quiet. The testing and the questioning and the prodding and the examination were complete, and he was merely being left to rest, to rebuild his strength, and overcome...something which Dr Akagi had 'explained' with a long sequence of polysyllabic, frequently hyphenated words, but which seemed to be a side effect of spending time clinically dead, and the sorcery and technology used to get his heart beating again. If anything, it was merely boring.

In all honesty, Shinji felt that he deserved a surplus of boredom, after the interesting times, in the Chinese sense, he had been through recently.

And it was not as if this weakness was unfamiliar to the boy. It was the same exhaustion, the same bone-deep fatigue as he had suffered after the Harbinger-3 incident. And that merely reminded Shinji that he still didn't know, couldn't remember exactly what had happened that first time.

Muscles aching, he propped himself up in the bed a little more, and continued to make notes from the history textbook he had open on his reader in front of him, trying to catch up on work. This was not helping his boredom. Who cared about the 1946-1992 period, really? The Second Cold War was much more interesting than the First, and everything in the First Cold War was so... dull. Dull and tired and hard to undertstand and... Shinji yawned. He felt his eyelids droop, and forced them open again.

The chime of a call came as a welcome relief. He put the pen back on the workdesk which was built into the bed, and dragged the call onto the screen. His face broke into a smile when he saw who it was.

"Yuki! Gany! Hikary! Haruhy," he said, in Japanese. "I'm... it's so good to see you."

There was the customary pause, as one excitable six-year old girl, and one very excitable six year old girl said their hellos to their foster brother.

"... and we're missing you so, so, _so_ much," Haruhy concluded, the _amlaty_'s lavender eyes wide. "When are you coming back, Shinji?"

"We've been trying for days to contact you," Yuki added, her eyes alert and intent on him. "The contact lines have only just opened back to London-2, and..."

Shinji nodded. "Yes." He coughed. "Um... before I say anything else, I'd just like to say that there is nothing really wrong with me and it's fine and..."

"... there's something wrong with you?" Gany asked, suddenly suspicious.

Shinji's heart twisted. "It's the same thing as I had before," he lied. "Some kind of thing where I'm all tired and have no energy. Nothing to do with anything that's happening in London-2 right now." He just had to stick to the story that the Ashcroft people had told him to tell people. It was easy, simple, and there was evidence to support it. It wouldn't distress them, and it also meant that they wouldn't be questioned because of the leak of classified information, which was always a plus.

If only it didn't involve lying to the only permanent family he'd ever really had.

"Are _ua_ being sick?" Hikary asked with undue enthusiasm.

"No, I'm not being..."

"Have you got such a temperature that you're actually catching fire and then running around burning and screaming because you're on fire because your temperature is too high?"

Shinji blinked at that. "Um. No." He blinked again. "I mean, do I look like I'm on fire?" he said, weakly.

"Well, maybe _ua_ got better. Did you know that _soli_ giantumonsteri attacked Londoni-twi?"

Gany placed one hand on her daughter's head, and carefully messed up her short, almost boyish hair. The little girl immediately let out a shriek, and began scrabbling to get in back into place. "Hikary, stop harassing Shinji," she said, with a smile which didn't quite reach her eyes. "I'm sure he must be fine. I mean, he wouldn't lie to us about that," she added, with a clinical stare.

And as a medical sorceress, specialising in arcanotherapy, she knew clinical stares. Shinji squirmed under it.

Yuki smiled at her wife, and then glanced down at her more-excitable daughter. "Yes, Hikary, calm down. I know you've been missing him, but you're mixing up your languages."

"Pah! But, no, really. What about the big monster-thing? I wanna know!"

Shinji winced. "I don't really know myself," he said. "There hasn't really been information getting to normal people,either.

"See, Hikary," Yuki said, nudging her daughter. "I told you that he wouldn't know."

"But he's Shinji! He knows lots of things. Get better soon, Shinji!"

The boy smiled; an expression tainted by nostalgia. Less than two months ago, this had been all that he had to worry about; normal, simple life. And then the letter had come and he had been dragged off to London-2 and almost been trodden on and then almost been nuked and then had to fight a giant monster and... he took a mental breath, and cursed his father, and then...

There was a knock at his door. He looked up from the screen for a moment. "Come in," he said, idly, before realising that he'd said it in Japanese. He repeated it in English.

The door slid open with a hiss. A pale figure dressed in a school uniform stood by the entrance, satchel clasped in both hands.

Shinji blinked heavily. He had not expected Rei to turn up at any time. "Hello," he said.

"Shinji? Who is it?" asked Yuki.

"Oh. She's... it's Rei. She's... someone I know from school."

The woman smiled. "Aww. She's showing up because you're ill. That's sweet." The look on her face was rather dirty as she added, "So, have you had any success?"

Gany elbowed her. "Yuki," she hissed. "Don't pressurise him like that."

"I'm not pressurising him. I just think it's nice that he has a girl visiting him when he's in hospital."

Shinji shook his head slightly. "It's..." He trailed off. It wasn't as if he would _object_ to it; she certainly was attractive, but... she was Rei. She'd saved his life, he'd used that to kill the Harbinger. How was he meant to explain something like that to them, when he couldn't even say the word 'Evangelion' to them? Couldn't say it; probably wasn't even meant to think it too loudly.

"See," Yuki said, smugly.

The boy looked up, from the embarrassing spectacle of his foster mothers teasing him about what they saw as romance, to face the girl... who he had seen naked... and on whose breast he had accidentally left a handprint maybe-bruise.

Wait. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea.

She hadn't moved.

"What is it, Rei?" he asked.

Her face twitched into a brief, forced smile, a flicker of an expression, before it returned to its normal passivity. "Test Pilot Ikari," she said.

His eyes widened. "There's no need to call me by my surname," he said, hastily. "I'm just _talking to my foster mothers_, not with the doctors or anything."

"Test Pilot Shinji?"

"No... just, Shinji. Please." He forced a smile. "Rei, why are you here?"

The girl blinked, but did not move.

"Rei?"

"I bought you a book," she said, the words coming out in one staccato burst. "You are bored in hospital."

"Oh." He looked around the room, eyes skipping from object to object, before jumping back to her. "Thank you. But... um... you didn't need to go to this effort and come all the way down here. You could have just sent it to me, and then called me. But... um... thank you."

"I could not send it. It is a paper book." She tilted her head. "And I had a medical check-up scheduled. I was only inconvenienced slightly." She reached into her bag, and bought it out, stepping over to his bedside, into view of the camera, to place it on the workdesk that lay across his lap.

Shinji turned it around, and picked it up, scanning the title, and flipping over to run down the blurb. It was written in the old-style alphabet, before the phonemic structure of Reformed English was implemented, but he could still read that, albeit slower.

"The presence of the word 'Children' in the title does not mean it is a training manual, even for desert operations," said Rei, suddenly. "It is fiction. The events within did not happen."

Shinji snorted. "I think I picked that up from the blurb and the..."

"Also, it is not a proscribed book. I checked, and you are cleared for it," she added. "It was written before bholes or dholes became common knowledge. Any resemblance is a coincidence."

The brown-haired boy nodded. "Thank you," he said, for lack of anything else to say. He coughed again, and cleared his thoughts. "Yuki, Gany," he said, checking with a glance that she was on camera, "...um, this is Rei. She's... someone I know from school."

He glanced back down to the screen, and flinched slightly at his foster mothers' expressions. Yuki, her eyes wide, mouth open. Gany, her face rigidly blank.

The two little girls, of course, didn't seem to be acting oddly at all.

Haruhy pulled a face. "You know a _sidocy_, Shinji?" the little _amlaty_ asked.

"It's not like they're way uncommon," Hikary interjected. "I mean, I know Barana's older brother's one, right?"

"Girls. Don't stare," Gany said, face still blank. "It's nice to meet you, Rei..." she left the words hanging, as an implicit question.

Rei blinked at her, and turned back to Shinji. "I have bought you a book," she said. "Read it. I must go to my appointment. I must not be late."

"Yes," the boy said. "Um. Thank you, again."

Her face twitched, into another forced, flickering attempt at a smile. "Sorry. This was not necessary," she said, before turning on her heel and walking out.

"Sorry?" the boy asked, almost to himself.

* * *

~'/|\'~


	15. Chapter 14: Archives I

**Chapter 14**

**Archives I / how frail to that large utterance of the early Gods!**

**AEON**

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"_Let us speak of the self-defence mechanisms that human societies appear to have developed throughout the ages. Let us speak of the allegations of 'witch', of the contempt for the insane and the abhorrence of those 'who know too much', of the countless inquisitions and of the fits of paranoia and suspicion that have hit every past society. Let us, in fact, talk of the delineation between 'barbarians', where all things are earned by one's own deeds and through one's own will, and 'tribals', where all things which are not mandatory are forbidden._

_I propose that, soon, mankind will cease to be tribal, and revert to barbarism once again."_

Luru Parz  
"Es gibt eine Klinge in den Mittelpunkt der Welt hingewiesen: ein Essay", 1912

* * *

~'/|\'~

_

* * *

I. The Loss of Ignorance_

I write these words from my hospital bed, surrounded by cold, sterile whiteness. The chill smell of antiseptics permeates past even the tube that the nurses, who control this place, have inserted into my nostrils. I think back to my youth, to my childhood, and lament that I have fallen so far, to be constrained here against my will, in what they claim to be my infirmity and dotage. They claim such things, yes, they claim that the dementia has stolen my cognition, but I know the truth, and so I must set it to paper, even though it pains me greatly that such knowledge be permitted to exist. I do not wish it to be so, and yet it must, because it is better than the alternatives. Men, and now women, of science dive blindly into the incoherent chaos which is all that surrounds us, and they babble tales about things which I have wisely feared all my life, publish them in scientific papers and talk of 'reality-states' when they should be more afeared of that which will come. Hence, I must write this, and allow this cursed knowledge which I never truly sought but which was forced upon me by events, to spread, and infect others, like a disease of the mind.

And in this, I am aided by the lies that the doctors tell the nurses, for they believe that I am crazy, that my mind is softening due to causes internal. I let them believe that, for I am smarter than them, smarter than they will ever be, and so the occasional action which encourages their delusions is best for me.

But in this, I grow distracted, for I must tell my tale, and there is only so much time that I have left. It is for this reason that I begin my tale where it must, at the beginning, where I gained my first, truly unwelcome sight into the darker truths of the cosmos, and where the tales that I had so fancily read in books suddenly took on a new, horrific tone.

It was the summer of 1922, and I was a young man in Berlin. I was enjoying the first, bright spring of my own days, and in truth I had a reason to be joyous, for I was engaged. I had been too young to be conscripted in the Great War, the so-called 'War to End All Wars', and my family, a respectable family of bankers, had been wealthy enough that the worst elements of the Allied blockade had not subjected me to the famine and suffering that so many of my countrymen had been afflicted with. I, myself, was at university, and I filled my days with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Proust alike, while my nights were filled with the regrowing pleasures of our capital. The worst of the violence between the Communists and the Freikorps had long since passed, and once again civilisation grew strong, the dark days of seasons past long gone.

Or so I believed at the time. Time alone showed me as a fool in the eyes of the rest of the world within two short decades. But such _human_ foolishness is nothing compared to what I know now, which would drive the masses mad if they knew, and the learning, the gaining of this knowledge began with that summer. It is for this reason that since that night, I have not smoked, and indeed the taste and texture of tobacco smoke leaves me choking, the inside of my mouth rebelling against the noxious fumes. I am pleased when the nausea inevitably comes, for the honest taste of bile, which is merely a sign of the body's displeasure, is far better for me that the lurking, perfumed odour which the burning of those hateful leaves produces.

At the time, as a yet-unmarried man, away from my parents, I took private accommodation. To reduce costs incurred to me, as well as to spread the burden of cleaning and cooking – which, as a young man, was not my preferred activity – I had looked for fellows of the university to lodge with, and so I had found three more gentlemen, of similar age and background, and together we rented a house half-an-hour's walk away from the place of study. Although I could have afforded a more pleasant lodging, I did not, for my parents had taught me the value of money. As a result, the house was somewhat bare, and in times of inclement weather, the roof above my attic study leaked. One might ask why I had chosen that room, and, in truth, in winters so did I, but it was now summer, and that season bought a pleasant cool breeze through the large, southerly-facing window, catching the light from sunrise to sunset, which was most pleasing.

I pause now, for a moment, to remember the names and faces of the other men I lived with. It is funny how the human memory works, for although there are so many things I long to forget, their faces have become nothing more than sketches, pencil lines drawn on paper now yellowed and translucent from age. Perhaps it is better that way. Who knows? Not I, for sure. But I still digress, for perhaps I am seeking, unconsciously, to avoid telling this tale.

The bedroom at the back of the house was taken by Wilhelm, a tall, blond man, strong of feature and face, and the one next to it was Pieter, who must have had some ancestry from the south, for he showed the strong nose and olive skin of the Romans, despite the fact that his family was from Hamburg, and had lived there for the last four generations. The two of them were artistic indeed, and I was often invited to the theatrical productions that the two of them would involve themselves in their free time, along with my fiancé. She grew to like them greatly, and indeed introduced them to some of her friends, but Wilhelm in particular seemed to have no luck with love, and remained a bachelor for the rest of his life. Still, the two of them were pleasant, cheerful, and I was pleased to call them my friends.

The man in the north-facing bedroom, though; Paul Brandt, was a rather different matter. Short, he was, with shifty, pale features, and a slight twitch in his left eyebrow. He was adverse to society, and rejected many attempts by myself and the other two to get him to socialise with us. Then again, he was a medicine student, and they always kept to themselves, never willing to truly associate with the rest of us at the university. The man was up all times of the night, and the light from under his door was always seemingly on when I woke in the small hours. Nevertheless, after several months, even he opened up a bit, and then I found his inner self. The man was one of the most widely read individuals I had ever met, fluent in all kinds of archaic German, Latin, Arabic, and even the tongues of the Orient, and his room was filled with texts both new and old, hand-written annotations packing the margins. Under his guidance, I delved into the history of our nation, looking past before the reunification under Bismarck to the disparates before then and back, further back, to the Romans and the barbaric tribes who dwelt there before the coming of civilisation, who worshipped strange, dark gods, at whom the two of us together sneered in our arrogance.

But one could not stay within darkened hallways forever, and I had no desire to. Strolls through the warm summer nights of Berlin were always pleasant, whether I was with my beloved or not, and I took the occasion as frequently as I could, for I felt that the summer was always too short compared to the autumn and winter, which always left me with a thin veil of black melancholy if I could not see the sun or get out into the fresh air for too long. On that fateful night, I was returning from the amateur production of some play which I now cannot remember, when I found that I had managed, somehow, in the late-evening light, to get myself turned around. Despite how I looked around, I could not tell where I was, and that in itself perplexed me, because I had gained familiarity with the area. The search of a few minutes revealed that I had left the theatre the wrong way, and evidently I had not been paying enough attention, something which was not aided by the drink or two that I might have imbibed with Wilhelm and Pieter before I had left their company, and they had gone for further merriment.

Nevertheless, it was, as I had said, pleasant, and I felt that there was no need to hurry home. This area of Berlin looked elderly, the houses rich, although somewhat degraded, as if they had not been repaired since before the Great War, and so I did not take the most direct route that I could have. Indeed, I could tell that I was entering the older parts of the city, from the way that the height of the buildings rose even as the streets narrowed, and I paused for a moment, as I heard from above, from some upstairs garret, the rich, deep melody of what seemed like a cello. By that point, I was in a sated mood, and so I slowed down further, peering in through the barred and often shuttered windows of the townhouses, curious as to what this place of the city was like.

Indeed, I did find another public house, and, because I had worked up a thirst from the exercise, I went inside, to quench it. It was only as I left, almost an hour later, into the premature twilight caused by the narrow streets which were still lit by elderly gas-lamps, when I realised that I had no idea where I was. A hurried conversation with the serving-girl behind the bar remedied this, however, and so I set off, following the somewhat slurred directions she gave me and assured me was the fastest route, heading deeper into the older parts of the city.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I merely, in my inebriated state, managed to get even further lost. And by that point, as night fell, I was beginning to get alarmed, for what in twilight sun had seemed to be pleasant and quaint, now seemed to bring to mind the worst visions of medieval thieves, which this area had most probably seen in the time that the stones had stood.

It was then that I found the church. Ancient, it was, ancient beyond even the surrounding buildings, for its ivy-covered spire predated the Gothic and the Baroque and looked, shockingly, to even have some of the brutish style of the post-Roman savages in its most base supports, though that was a ridiculous idea. I would like to say that I shivered upon seeing it, as a premonition of what was within, but, in truth, the only shiver came from the wind, channelled between the narrow buildings.

I do not know what came over me. I believe that it could only have been the beer talking, for I decided that the best way to find out where I was could only be to climb the bell-tower, for it reached above the houses, and from there I might be able to see some other landmark which could be used to guide my way home, or, at the very least, to get out of this ancient place and back into the modern, electric-lit Berlin which I knew.

The metal gate creaked as rusty hinges protested at their movement, and I stepped into the graveyard which surrounded the house of God. There was a nasty, damp swampy smell to the ground around here, and I realised that the buildings that surrounded the graveyard on all sides would be enough to block the light of the sun for much of the day, leaving the foetid humours of the soil to fester. Certainly, the acrid scent of juniper, from the thin, spindly trees that were planted around the surrounding wall, was a welcome relief from the marsh-like odour, and I tried not to think of the condition that the corpses interred in this place would be in, drowned after their death. I paused for a moment, to wonder why they had chosen to build a church here, because I shook my head, as the fact that the main building appeared to predate the surrounding houses came to mind. In all probability, this had once been the village church of some smaller settlement, long ago subsumed by Berlin.

Though I was a rational man, this was far too stereotypically sinister for me to feel entirely comfortable in myself, and, perhaps buoyed up by the liquor, I stepped promptly towards the main building. The gravestones were themselves tall and somewhat ornate, and I made a note to myself that it would be an interesting day's excursion to maybe make a more detailed examination of them, to find out the history of this place, but it was not to be done now. Much as I am loathe to admit it, I was almost running by the time I reached the aged oak door that led into the chapel, and I stepped through the smaller door-in-a-door with relief. The interior of the church itself was a far less real source of macabre imaginings, for it was as modern as any other old church, with gas lamps and candle-stands casting light, as well as scattered bundles of candles. I took one, fumbling in my pocket for a coin to toss into the donations box, and lit it. Although the light was dim, it was somehow very reassuring, and I proceeded with more confidence further into the edifice.

It was a steep climb to the top of the church tower, and several times I did ask myself why in the name of God I was doing this, in this abnormal church thick with ivy which crept over its surface like the hands of some lecherous priest, caressing the stone with its invasive roots. But then I reminded myself that I was lost, late at night, in an area of Berlin I was not familiar with, and that I was merely doing this to get to a high point, so that I could get my bearings outside the warren of older buildings within which I was trapped. I would try to see if I could find where I was from up here, see if I could recognise any other spires, and, failing that, I would merely try to find some public house or the like which remained open at this hour, and, if I could not get coherent directions of them, attempt to get a room for the night. And, indeed, when I got to the top, and had rested for a good few minutes, for I was exhausted and still somewhat inebriated, I could see the domes of the Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church over to my right, rising above the lesser architecture, and that itself told me that I had wandered far further than I had thought. Nevertheless, I resolved that I would head in its direction, for I knew that from there, I could get a night bus towards my home, and at the very least, I would not be in these squalid, dark, under-populated streets, which I was sure was an improvement.

That was not to be. As I descended the steep stairs again, I could hear voices from below, male and female alike, and a sudden feeling of shame hit me, as I realised that I had wandered into this church without warning or precaution, making no attempt to find if it was occupied. Skulking in the shadows, I vowed that it would be easier all around if I could leave this place without being seen, because I did not wish to face the embarrassment of having to face the priest, especially in my tired and emotional condition.

Fast of mind, I blew out the candle, snuffing out the light which could have been used to locate me, and looked around, and slunk behind a rood screen, the aged cloth faded and tattered by the infirmities of age. Nevertheless, I lurked there, moderately safe in the conviction that I would not be found by whosoever would look for me casually. And this suddenly became something of the utmost importance to me, because I heard the heavy clank of the great old door at the front of the church closing, and, more than that, I heard the grinding of the rusty iron bar which sealed that portal.

Now, insofar as I knew, I was trapped in here, and animalistic panic gripped me, the fear of any small animal suddenly stuck in a situation which it had not expected or desired, and in such a state I froze rather than fled, my muscles seemingly disobedient and possessing a mind of their own. No matter how hard I willed them to flee, to escape, to leap through a stained-glass window in a flight most dramatic, or more sensible to search for some other way out, I could not do so. Indeed, my mind first leapt to the idea that I should conceal myself in the spire once again, and I must confess that I was tempted, for it was unlike that whoever was here would head up to such a high place, but I had snuffed my candle, and some rational part of my mind told my most stridently that I imperilled my life by making such a climb in the pitch dark, for, indeed, without a candle, I would be climbing stone worn down and smoothed by uncounted footsteps of others before me, and that seemed to me to be too dangerous to countenance. Hence, I chose to stay concealed down here, for the rational mind also raised a most Pandoran spark of curiosity in me, and I wished to see what was happening, for it might just merely be a normal church meet, but the gothic strangeness of the grounds had drawn my interest, and my mind was whispering dark tales of mystery to me.

God! That I had ignored that part, and simply risked the stairs! I can only assume, looking back, that I was more inebriated by the copious amounts of liquor than I knew. But I stayed, and I watched, and so I saw the collection of men and women, their clothes all too normal for the modern inhabitants of Berlin, but they wore masks the colour of bone, strange and loathsome, and terribly akin to some grotesquery worn by the apothecaries and bonesawers who, in their ignorance, believed that such garb would save them from the many plagues of the barbaric medieval times. They made their voices echo strangely, in a way which I can still recall to this day, a susurration and rattle accompanying every word that they spoke. I could see no sign of faces, nothing of skin or eyes under the face-shrouding masques and hats and cowls, and I shuddered, because it is a principle well known that the face and the eyes are the windows of the soul, and to conceal the face, especially with such dress, is to remove the traces of humanity to a viewer.

And yet they chatted casually. That was the thing. Despite the twisted aberration of their enunciation and garb, they chatted about the weather and how they were feeling, all the time while they appeared to emplace some strange iron contraptions, long and crude and rusty, with multiple thin stands propping up a centre ellipsoid, like some disgusting and ugly piece of modernist art; all lines and corners and angles and blockiness, with no regards for the more refined tastes which are clearly acknowledge to be the superior aesthetic choice. I recognised the censers which hung like gaudy, gold-coated baubles from the crowned oval at the centre, for they were marked with the cross of the Lord, and I was disquieted, for such an ugly thing to be bought into a church of this antiquity was distasteful indeed. Still, if the local congregation wished to do such things, then I was no man to stop them, and had no desire to, as by this point my upmost desire was for my own bed, where I could rest, dreamless and quiescent.

Such thoughts were shaken from my head, though, when two individuals in the crowd removed their clothing, and the man and woman who had done so stood naked before their fellows. Before my readers get unduly excited, though, I must dwell on the grotesqueries of real human flesh. It is pale, and flabby and malformed. It bends and curves and sags and wobbles and moves without the will of the possessor. Where limpid, lank hair does not sit, then engorged veins bulge and flex as it moves. The two who removed their clothing were no film stars, no beautiful people tempting and arousing, and in truth, had I not been shocked and appalled by this action in a house of God, especially one so ancient, and had found a new wave of wakefulness that fought off sleep from new, sudden, unsuspecting fear and confusion; if it had not been so, I would have stood, and asked them to don their garbs once more. The man especially was aged and wrinkled, lines of scar-paled flesh criss-crossing his upper arms and a long, curving one on his abdomen which I can still recall to the day, but the woman was grotesquely obese. It was not the obesity which comes with the primal fecundity of the idols of primitive tribes which cavort and roll around their crude fetishes; no, it was morbid, and vile, the fat of the decadent and the self-indulgent, which show their own body as little regard as they do the common decencies of society.

These two, one thin and cadaverous and scarred, the other bloated and bulging and morbid, lit the censer, and my nostrils flared, as I smelt the pungent, scented odour of what to me seemed to be cheap commercial tobacco, the kind that anyone might purchase in your common corner shop, or bulk buy from the traders in the markets of Berlin. It was true that there were other things in there, yes, a certain acrid scent of rubberised fabric which made me feel light in the head, the incense of the church that their deeds were profaning, a hint of metal, and certain things which I now recognise to be used by various superstition group in the Americas as a way of communing with the tribal gods, who are their ancestors, and who they believe watch over them, interceding with greater deities.

"Hail to He who Dwells Outside the Angles of Time," cried the man, and I recoiled in shock, for I knew that name. Some of the elder texts I had read with my friend, not least the _Daemonolatria_ of Remigius, printed in Lyons in 1595, had mentioned it, in some of the more obscure passages. It was said to be an unnatural, spindly thing, more akin to a sketch in the air than anything concrete or mundane, worshipped as the father of the blasphemous spider-god of the Indies, Atlach-Nacha. Fortunately, I held my breath, and did not make a sound, for I feared to be heard, for I had heard lurid, trashy tales, not worth the paper they were printed on, of groups that met in places such as this, and though I did not care much for such grotesque absurdity, nevertheless I felt ill at ease at the idea that I might be in a real-life story of that kind.

"Hail to Him!" the voices of the gatherers called back, and I shuddered, for there were patterns of intonation and pronunciation which were far too similar to me. There were those among this gathering who, I was sure, would normally have been seen in more reputable environs, and who merely journeyed to the place of the old city for this; and I, a poor, drunken student was hidden in their midst. They would not appreciate my presence; that much was sure to me, and that was the last straw for any chance for me to confess that I was here. A braver man than I would have run away, fled far from this damned church and its foetid graveyard, but I was not a brave enough man to flee, and so I stayed, hidden, because I feared discovery too much.

Long I stayed hidden, and too much did I hear and too much did I see, for my insatiable, sick curiosity would not permit me to turn away. They spoke further, of Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, whose influence on the world waxes and wanes like the moon, and like the cycles of life from winter to summer and back again. They spoke of one who they only called The Beast, but whose description brought to mind certain passages found in the grave goods of the pharaoh Seth-Peribsen, and at that my blood ran cold. And then the names came fast and quick; Kuash-Seargh who seals all gates, Hermes Trismegistus, child of the mating of Hermes and Thoth and father of the dark priest Imhotep, and of the Queen of Eyes and the Blinded Scion, who wait for us at the end of everything. And as the lights burned low, the talk changed to Glaaki, to Remiel and Barakiel, who they claimed were twin gods, merely appropriated by the Christians, who would dance and prance through ten thousand years of history entwined together, to Yaun'ghe and Tssuggothia, to Juses and Zummofon. The acrid smoke they burned filled by lungs, and once or twice a forced cough left my lips, but fortunately they too were choking on the perfumed haze, and my slips went unheard. And although my eyes grew tired I could not sleep, for their droning voices bore into me, and moreover if I slept, I might make a noise which would be heard, and that, that for certain I could not permit.

* * *

~'/|\'~

_

* * *

II. The Darkest of Dreams_

And yet, the sleep claimed me, and though I long to claim that it granted me the sweet taste of Lethe, in truth the night has only ever since permitted me to sup from the Cocytus and the Acheron. I found myself, all of a sudden, standing in a street that I had not seen before. And, furthermore, not only was it not any of the streets of the Berlin I knew (and I was well enlightened of those streets by now), but it was unlike any street I knew.

Above me, from horizon to horizon, the sky was striated in void darkness and brilliant light, and the air felt humid, as if a storm was soon approaching, the gritty taste of tin crawling along my tongue. The figures that surrounded me, though, were seemingly uncaring of this ungodly weather, and though I tried to take in the sights around me, I was swept along in the crowd, carried from place to place by the unyielding swarm, and I could no more stop them than I could turn back the passage of the tides.

I must slow down here, for this lies many decades in the past, and I must record every detail that I can.

First, I shall speak of the city. I had seen Berlin, growing again after the end of the War, and it was fair indeed. I had seen Paris the beautiful, and Rome the ancient, and London the mercantile. But all of those cities, mighty places, were as nothing to the vast spires of stone and glass and steel and other, stranger things, that reached up and up, putting even the skyscrapers which the Americans are so proud of to uttermost shame. The geometries of the city were familiar, yet alien; although the fascination of the modernists with the lectures of Euclid and brute functionality was retained, they appeared to be _old_, and the newer structures, made of something which was not glass, and which shone like diamond in the strange light, were curving. In between these spires were vast ziggurats and pyramids, which put any accomplishment of Babylon or Egypt in the shade. God, they must have stretched half a kilometre or more into the air, more akin to a mountain than anything built by the hands of man!

The sky, as I have already mentioned was patterned, unreal, without a trace of blue in its white and black, painted onto the heavens and marred only by the wisps of grey which blurred the two opposites together, but the strangeness of the atmosphere was a lesser draw of my attention. Instead, the things that hung in the air, impious spires of Stygian metal and lucreous gold which could only be strange, alien temples, speck after speck of smaller things in near-constant lines and links drawing geomantic diagrams against the altered sky, and things that flapped and squawked and roared against the raucous noise of this titanic city, the calling of the beasts barely audible. At first I thought they may have been birds, but no birds could be that large, could ever be that size no matter what the discoveries of archaeologists might say, and still fly. The way that they clawed through the air was grotesquely similar to the ungainly, graceless flight of the flying rodents men call bats, and there was something shockingly reminiscent about their posture and shape that I dared not place for subconscious fear of what it was.

And the people, who packed the boulevards and alleys alike in countless numbers? They were a disparate sort, I thought, at first; Germanic and Mediterranean blood mixed with swarthy Arabs, hulking African sorts, and the teeming hordes of the Orient. But then I began to notice the oddities; men and women who seemed to be afflicted by an odd illness, healthy skin that was tinged with a nauseating grey, which made them look like they were in the last stages of some wasting illness. Perhaps, I thought, the city was afflicted with such a plague, and I cried out, in warning, before I realised the foolishness of such a deed, and instead removed my jacket, to warn against any aerosol transmission that might occur. But none listened, and none stared at me, and as I was pushed from place to place, I instead saw that demons lurked among these people, skin like the uttermost depths of the darkest night, with eyes that reflected the lights like an owl's, reflected in the burning torches that some of them carried, and I grew afraid. What degeneracy had happened in this place, I asked myself, and resolved that I not be caught as one not used to their customs, for, in a way, I still remembered the terrified concealment from the cavorting cultists, and was determined not to repeat it.

Round and round I was swept, and I grew sick of being battered by the random wanderings of this great crowd, grew sick of the blows to my stomach and back from inopportune elbows, so, with effort, I divested myself of the masses, and left them to their fruitless wanderings. It was quieter away from the great boulevards of this terrible city, and I could breathe, and wander. There was text flowing along the walls, like leaves in a current, and I reached out to touch it. Imagine my surprise when I saw no light on my raised hand, as there would be if there were cunningly concealed cinematographists' booths, and felt nothing but smoothed glass underneath. And their text was unfamiliar, strange; I saw hints of the Roman alphabet, but there were new and unreadable symbols, and I could not comprehend what any of the words said.

Wander I did, for what felt for hours, before I paused for rest, and while there, succumbed to curiosity, despite my fear. Adjusting my clothing, and smoothing down my hair, I approached a woman stood on a street corner, clad in a mantle the colour of snow, and I asked her what was happening, for I was new to this city and unfamiliar with their customs.

"We wait for our god, and her consort," said the woman, twitching her cloak and at that point I realised that she wore nothing under the garment. "They will come and they will consummate our glory, and we shall consummate theirs."

I longed to ask her what god they spoke of, but my resolve to not be found out was strong, and so I held my tongue. Nevertheless, dark thoughts of the non-Roman gods of Germania and the horrors which I had read that pagan witches conducted in the Black Forest momentarily flashed through my find; tales of Tan, and the foul naked rites conducted by witch-women in the depths of night, men drowned to feed the spirits of the rivers, and other such things which I had condemned as ridiculous but now, uncalled-for, jumped to mind.

"Ah," said I, my words clear, trying as best I could to copy the accents that I had heard, for I wished to remain concealed. "In truth I have just arrived, and my journey has been long and left me both wearied and hungry. Pray, madame, that you might aid me by directing me to the nearest place where I may garner both accommodations and foodstuffs." The words were thick in my mouth, filled with what seemed to be to be much unneeded archaisms, and so I made my best attempts to imitate them, no matter how foolish I sounded to myself.

At those worlds, the white-clad woman laughed, and it was worse for how innocent, how pure it was. My discomfort only grew, too, from the laughter, for it seemed to confirm my suspicions that I would truly be found as an outsider. "My mistake," she said, "for it is my fault that I did not see that you were a pilgrim."

"A pilgrim," said I, hastily. "Yes. But sadly I was assaulted by strangers as I arrived, and they took everything of value of mine. I reported it to the authorities, of course, but my journey has been disrupted by this, and I require a place to wait while such matters are dealt with."

Her mouth went then into a "oh" of exclamation, and I noted the unnatural, almost luminescent whiteness of her teeth, and the glowing vein-like lattice which seemed to run across her tongue, in a matter which looked almost artistic, as if it were a tattoo of some form. But that was impossible, I told myself, because even if these people could do such a thing, surely no-one would be foolish enough to do such a thing to their tongue, for the pain would truly be unbearable, and even if one could find the fluorescing dyes to produce such a thing from within the manifold of the natural world, to do such a thing to the tongue was mad.

"Come with me," she told me, "and I will care for you until the adjusticars resolve your problem."

Now, for me, this was a statement of some concern. I did not wish to end up entrapped in this strange place, and in my head curiosity and fear warred for dominance, for though I wished to know more about this place, from my trips to other countries I was already aware of how social custom was different in one place to another, and that was in the waking world, where there are ties of communication and bonds of trade. In this strange world I found myself in, I knew so little, and surely I would give myself away if I interacted with the individuals here for too long, and then who knew what would happen? Not to mention that the oddities of this woman herself, for despite her beauty, which drew from the most ancient bloodlines of German in seemliness, she indeed appeared more to me as some quasi-divine nymph than a flawed mortal, and the oddities in her garb and appearance were more than enough to make we wary. "I dare not impose upon your charity," I told her, trying to disengage from the conversation, "and so, despite the fact that I thank you for your offer, I must refuse."

She laughed, her voice a silver peal. "Nonsense," she said, with a casual shrug that made her loose robe slide over her body. "The First Consort insists on charity, after all, and I would be remiss, and, indeed, I would be vulnerable to allegations of religious disrespect if I did not provide all the aid I could to you. It is no imposition; it is a blessing."

And with that said, she took me by the hand, and whirled me away, the sound of her bare feet slapping on the floor a staccato beat broken only by the splashing as she, without a care, trod in the puddles which pooled around the edges of the strange vegetation which blossomed in black and white throughout the city.

I cannot say, truly, how much I remember of the later times. It was as a dream, even within a dream; a blur of activity and motion, best described with incoherent sensory impressions than with words. But as I cannot obtain the sights I saw, I shall only scattered disparate words throughout this tale, and hope as best you can reconstruct that which I cannot, myself, remember true to life.

We ate foods which were far beyond my student's budget; served en-masse in sprawling dining halls where what must have been the uneducated proletariat of this place came in their thousands to eat. We drank, and there was something off about the sickly sweetness of the bright blue fluid, which left all the colours in the world bright and radiant, haloes of monochromatic light shining around faces like the pale aura of the full moon. Then she took me down, down through steeped stairs and moving rooms, though corridors lit through lurid, shimmering panels which illuminated the same recurring themes of black and white. I can remember shivering, for my eyes were aching now from the disjointed and emergent chaos of the striated light and void, and it seemed to me that the world was spinning, as if I were in the uttermost depths of fever.

We emerged further down, to a place with a sunlight sky, blue unlike the mad horizon in the world above, and beside me, in chill mountain-tasting air, was the insidious sound of lapping water from the forest-ringed lake. Yet the water was too dark for the lighting, and as I gazed into its depths, along with many others, something moved deep below, and the depths were replaced momentarily with the same black and white striation which suffused the upper layers, before the simulacra of nature returned. The fever-heat inflamed me, and I moved to place my hand in the cooling fluid, before the white-robed woman moved to stop me.

"Do not do that," she said, "for that is where they rest when they do not war."

I asked who she talked of, and she shot me a glance of uttermost confusion tinged with disdain, and I wisely did not ask any further on the topic.

By this point, I was near-fainting, gasping for air, and, looking slightly alarmed, the white-robed woman took me underground once again, through this time we did not re-emerge in sunlight nor in further sky-tainted realms, but instead went into a warren of tight spaces which I would have called a street, had it not been for the ruthlessly geometrical ceiling that hung a metre above my head. She led me into what appeared to be housing, and I gazed upon an Erebus of decadence, for there were shared beds with both men and women in them in haze-filled fog that left me only choking further – and at that moment I remembered the choking scent of the tobacco – and the sounds of their inchoate activities. Around me, the thin piping and whine of instruments I knew not the names of could be heard, the sound of wind in reeds mixed with the brassy rattle of drums, and I spun, looking for the players, but she merely eased me down. I moved to object, but the strength in my body left me, and I sunk towards the woman.

She was muttering prayers at me, a babble of names and incantations and melded profanities, but I cannot say I can remember her words, for consciousness barely was retained within me, and my vision was hooded with black.

And then came the voice, and all stopped their deeds

The cruel face of one of their rulers, who she informed me was the Consort, stared out from cinematographs-like windows all across the room... nay, indeed the city. The man was one of the teeming masses of the Orient with a deep, malevolent cunning in his narrowed eyes, and he spoke a few words, which had the crowds falling down in what I could only describe as religious ecstasy, and I joined them, for those words, which have burned themselves from my mind, seemed to inspire a terrible devotion in me. I remember a perfect moment, an understanding that the face which leered down at me was no more his face than the sky above was, but I cannot understand nor remember why, and for that I am grateful, for at that moment I could no more think like the rational man which I must believe that I am than I could disobey. The woman and I made love immediately afterwards, and I believe our actions were little more than grovelling obsequiousness, in the midst of rutting flesh and orgiastic madness as little more than beasts, and it was not until afterwards that the guilt struck me, for out in the Berlin that I knew I was engaged to a woman I loved, and I said as much to her, as my flesh aged and the post-coital fatigue overcame me.

She only looked at me in misunderstanding, as if she did not understand any concept of love beyond that of beastly, animalistic lust, and the lack of comprehension in those beautiful eyes was not truly human, and at that moment I grasped when and where I was, and that she was little more than one of the temple prostitutes of ancient Carthage, in a world where there would never be a Cato to burn the degeneracy to the ground and sow the ground with salt such than none could ever repeat those ancient sins.

And then she spoke to me about dreams, in these rooms that stank of the acrid and bitter scent of human sweat, the sickly odour of lust permeating everything, and the noise coming through from the other parts of this profane residence which they, in their depravity, called a church. She entailed me on great lengths – and I had to ask her to repeat the convoluted, alien syllables several time before I could grasp them - of shilicobtenarunosi, the midnight dreams of pleasure sent by the Consort to women, and the Empress to men, as to ensure that they were rewarded for their service and she expanded that as a priestess, she was granted far more of them, in her decadence, than a normal citizen might receive. My talk of temperance and balance went unheeded except with confusion, and she instead moved onto haetarobtenarunosi, dreams of respect and authority, and juenaxobtenarunosi, dreams of happiness. But these were but casual things, compared to the veritobtenarunosi, and as she spoke further and further on them, a horrifying idea began to shift in my mind, underneath the deep dark waters of consciousness.

And it was this revelation, that this _was_ a revelation. This was yet to come. This was not some dream, not some realm of fantasy which I had wondered to while drugged by Baccahean cultists, washed up past the Gates of Horn and Ivory to some fevered and inebriated imagining. All the glories, all the triumphs of these people will be built upon our own, and they will all be meaningless, because our descendents, the fruit of our loins, will be the subjugated slaves of vile sorcerers. They will rule in the minds of men, and use them as currency when trading for favours from things much mightier and more terrible than anything within the ken of man. These blasphemers, these heartless arcanocrats will be as among the ancient gods of mythology, except worse, for while the children of Athens and Rome alike could reassure themselves that the rites and rituals could protect them, warded behind a layer of faith that was needed because they could not observe their gods walking among them, our children, or our children's children, will have those comforts stolen from them, and will exist only as cattle for things that were once men, and who shape them and their society for only their own profit.

My mind snapped at this, I must confess, and I ran screaming from her room, a mindless flight through cloistered halls of white and black, running from forever and to forever that I might escape that which was not within my mind. The certainty filled my every thought, and so I did not see the skull-faced things that began to track me until one raised its wand, and I collapsed, a terrible burning agony coruscating over my skin, and opened my eyes to see the interior of the aged church once more, the chill light of the early morning shining through the ancient stained glass. Pulling myself upright, I convulsed and vomited, a shudder such that it felt like my body was aware and warring against me, tendons rupturing from flesh. In the depths of terror, I could feel the beaded rivulets sweat run down my spine.

But the wall between the sleep of men and our waking is precious and thankful, for once one has passed through it, the deeds and happenstance of the other side is far less meaningful, and already, as I crept out of the now-empty church, it was beginning to fade in importance, as the rationalisations and febrile justifications of mortal society came to me. Surely it was just a dream, a dream aggravated by a lack of sobriety and the sinister look of this old church – something which was much reduced in the daylight, when it had a certain grandeur and an ancient, though decaying, splendour, rather than the unabashed malignancy which I had perceived in it in the night. There had been merely a dream, merely a fevered imagining of cults and night-terrors when, in truth, I had merely got lost on my way back from a play, and stumbled into an old church, sleeping off the beer in there much as some aged and disreputable vagrant.

I could have held that, could have accepted it for the truth, were it not for the scent that permeated all of my clothing; a hint of metal, of burning rubber, and incense, all woven together with the odour of the heavy smoker. As I made my way home, I knew that the dark worshippers had been real, and as I endured the mockery, which concealed relieved concern, of my peers for having got so lost, my mind nagged at me about everything else.

And so, to this day, the scent of vile tobacco smoke haunts me, and even the slightest whiff will leave me gagging and choking. But more than that, the terror and horror of what might lie ahead of us drives me onwards, and as I write this, at the end of my life, it is with uttermost honesty that I say that this fear has lead me to do what I have done. It is the terror that lead me to dream of that dread city, and of the white-robed woman again. From that day onwards, it has sat in me, quiescent, nursing, and there it stayed, until the day that I met Wingate Peasley, and it blossomed into grotesque flower.

* * *

~'/|\'~

**

* * *

End of Book I of Aeon Entelechy Evangelion**

* * *

~'/|\'~

_**

* * *

Coming up soon in Aeon Entelechy Evangelion**_

_Seagulls, tiny white shapes against the blue sky circle as, below, the vast, ponderous grey shapes lumber along, themselves dwarfed by the black spire that rises into the heavens._

"The year is 2091, and this is the Aeon War. And there are foes on every side."

"_To be honest, Shinji needs to try harder," the man says clinically. "At the moment, he's just not doing well enough._

"But there still is hope."

**THE EVANGELION GROUP**

_The titanic shape of _**UNIT 01** _straightens up, a vast, tubular contraption held in both hands. Beside it,_ **UNIT 00** _kneels, charge beam held firmly in hand._

**NEGN PROJECT DAEVA**

_Something vast and hulking and terrible._

_"This is my little baby," the young woman says with a smirk._

"The Second Child in **UNIT 02** enters play..."

_The red giant snaps from position to position, each motion precise, each motion measured, each motion deadly. There is polite applause from the onlookers._

**YAM**

"... and faces her first Harbinger."

_Four green eyes ablaze like miniature suns, the red comet of Unit 02 breaks the sound barrier, leaving a shock-wave of ruptured air behind it._

"To less than universal acclaim."

"_What are you doing, idiot!_

_"Me? It's your fault!"_

"New foes."

**SHALIM**

_A hulking shape emerges from the darkness, water cascading off its back as it rises from the depths._

"New challenges."

**SHAHAR**

_Two... three... four... more_

"And new enemies."

"_From this, we can deduce that the group has large scale organisation and a decentralised, yet coordinated command structure. The perfect cell network."_

_"And do you know who's behind it?"_

_"No."_

"Prepare for action!"

_Side by side, Units 01 and 02 stand, the bright lance of plasma from the green-eyed behemoth melting rock and metal, and counterpointed by the earth-shattering explosions of its sibling._

"Prepare for revelations."

_Asuka squints at Rei. "What kind of _thing _are you meant to be?" she asks, a slight sneer twisting her face._

_The pale girl tilts her head. "I am a serial killer," she says, her expression calm. "They look like everyone else."_

"And prepare for conspiracy."

"_What are you doing, Ikari," the white-haired woman asks, her voice aged, ruined. "What do you have planned?"_

**MOLOCH**

_And a dark island erupts in light._

"And, of course, even more fanservice!"

* * *

~'/|\'~


	16. Chapter 15: Rest for the Wicked

**Chapter 15**

**Rest for the Wicked / 'Saturn! look up and for what, poor lost King?  
**

**AEON**

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

_"The prevalent view of history would have you believe that the Second Cold War was a conflict between the democracies of the New United Nations, and the authoritarian states of the Middle East and China; a conflict over the rights of man. Such a view is, not to put it lightly, a falsehood. China liberalised heavily over the end of the twentieth and early twenty-first century, and the NUN, just like the UN and the League of Nations before it, would always put _realpolitik_ above the absolute values of human rights and personal freedoms._

_The Second Cold War was the result of economics, not ethics. And the first blow was struck by the post-industrial societies of the so-called 'West'. How could it not be? Together, the nanofactory and the D-Engine wrecked economies globally. This was economic warfare on an unheard-of scale. Forget about tariffs and embargoes; what do you do to deal with the man who tells you that he no longer needs the services which you have structured your economies to perform and who keeps the technology which makes it possible for himself, as far as he can? And even though the technology proliferated, the economic conditions in the post-industrial nations could survive the transition in a way that industrial economies could not. Imagine a black-box replacing the export trade, manufactured goods without a source, and the reason for that is clear. Between 2020 and 2035, the Chinese economy shrunk by a tenth in real terms, while the Western nations leveraged their edge into a great divide._

_And we need not even get started on the details of the petrochemical economies of the Middle East, to realise that the D-Engine and A-Pod together were a knife into the back of the social order, and how the local oligarchs had to cling to China to maintain their personal power. Was there ever any question that there would be a rise in nationalism and protectionism, to protect their own struggling markets from drowning in nanofactory goods? Was there any question that an entire generation of men and women would have their livelihoods taken from them and grow bitter? As history has taught us, and they would have known, such conditions make for militancy. And yet the NUN actively promoted both technologies, without a care for how it would affect non-member states._

_Why? Apathy, or malevolence; neither are palatable."_

Pravlin Lal  
"The Lies of History's Consensus"

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**POLLEN-Contaminated Zone – Central India**

The howl of the wind was a thin whine, razor-high and promising pain to any outsider. Thunder cracked above, casting the dusty, ruined land in bruise-coloured light. The plants that survived in this once-fertile, now-withered land clung to the land around the river. Some of the iridescent, oily slick that covered its surface was manifesting yellowing leaves. There were patches of other growths, away from the water, but they were dark and lacking in the green chlorophyll of Earth. Instead, the sick fungoid bulges were painted in hues of blue, which ranged from midnight to midday's sky, and which sprawled weed-like across the terrain, covering the old cities and tearing the concrete apart from within. Low to the ground, a choking haze of toxic spores hung, whipped around by the movements of the air.

Within the security cordon established by the New Earth Government, the old world had been abandoned. The weapon emplacements and barriers and aircraft were to the west of here, though, for the r-state here was elevated enough that NEG technology frequently malfunctioned and ceased to work; the physical properties of the matter warped by the reality-state, turning delicate microelectronics to junk. Only the crudest technology could work at times, things with vacuum tubes which would have looked more in place a hundred and fifty years ago. This hellhole was left to the Rapine Storm, children of the Ruined King, the degenerate hordes swarming out en masse to dash themselves against the armies of the NEG and the Migou, who were no less determined to maintain quarantine than the forces of panhumanity.

And to the east, murky green-red clouds covered horizon to horizon, rising up high and cascading down from the heights, bringing with them the tainted land of Leng. A storm was coming.

Through the city overgrown with alien vegetation, a predator slunk. Larger than a car, it was roughly centauroid, although its forearms were overdeveloped such that it frequently used them for movement, knuckle-walking across rough terrain. Dropping lower, it continued to stalk its prey, a pack of feral dogs, twisted by their environment, but nonetheless surviving on what they could scavenge from those elements of the Terran ecosystem which survived here. Slowly, meticulously it moved, creeping through the ruins of the buildings, and up and down walls, until it was within range. And then the leathery-skinned beast charged towards the pack, which did not react one bit to the sudden blurred movement.

Perhaps in the beast's mind, it wondered about the complete lack of response. It was not that fast, after all. Surely it must have been seen, its movement must have stirred some suspicion. Why would they not run? But such approximations to thought were meaningless, compared to the hunger from its crossing of these barren landscapes and the desolate hellholes the forces of panhumanity made when they set up breakzones with arcanochromatic weapons. Vaulting up, it snatched at one thin, starved canine with a hand, bringing it towards its vertically-split maw, even as it crushed another one beneath its bulk.

Something was wrong. The one in its hand snapped, yes, bones crushed, but there was a terrible viscosity about it. Instead of squishing it properly, its hand sunk into the dog like it was made of tar. And the canine beneath it did not flatten; instead, it was a thorn, a hardened manikin of bone and carapace that the beast crushed down into the overgrown pavement, traces of red blood smearing the alien blue plants. From within the hand, there was a cacophony of whines, and the balding, unkempt fur of the dog lengthened, miniature copies of its head appearing, sprouting within its flesh. Howling, these mouths bit into the hand of the beast, tearing out flesh and doing what bullets could not have done, as barbed fangs injected the venom-that-was-its-self into the flesh.

And then the rest of the pack piled in. Maws and fangs and glowing opalescent eyes and tarry-black flesh intruded and tore into the intruder, and around it, growing from underground, the mosses and fungi born of Terra, within the clogged-up sewer systems blossomed forth, in tendrils streaked with chlorophyll green as well as the night-dark tar of the substance that every one of those things was made of.

The child of Leng tried to fight, but every move just drew it into the terrible predatory presence of part of the ecosystem of Earth, woken from billions of years of slumber by the resources and the physical laws needed for repair.

Repair, and reactivation.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Ladies, gentlemen." Gendo Ikari's words were flat, level, and exquisitely professional. "Three Harbingers have been eliminated, and each time, as predicted, their target was London-2."

Oversight raised her eyebrows, red eyes glinting. "The calculations were correct," she said, flatly. "Procedure has been followed adequately, too; I can report that at no point have we violated our permissions. Representative Ikari is to be congratulated for both his efficiency, and his strict obedience to protocol. At no point has the Foundation been exposed to criticism due to actions he has authorised."

"Thank you." A pleasantry, but nothing more. Ranaby was an ally, but an ally was not a slave, and had he made any egregious errors that could have been smoothed over, he would not have been spared. But he had talked to her in private, and she had been pleased about how the situation with the Evangelions had improved the Foundation's status with the NEG as a whole.

"With that in mind, I propose that the requested authorisation for the Evangelion Group that, once evaluations are complete, they be permitted to move the Production Model to reinforce their assets. In L2," the Representative for Research said, shooting a glance at Gendo.

The man fumed inside. She had broken his flow, and he was sure it was intentional. "Seconded," he stated.

"What is the current status of Harbinger-2?" Oversight asked, drumming her fingers on the table.

"Harbinger-2?" Representative Rosaiah, Gendo's old superior for whom he had been Deputy Representative, frowned, the wrinkles deepening. "No signs of activity."

"So we won't have to keep Unit 02 on standby in Tokyo-3 case of sudden activity? It might have to be moved in to... remedy a breakout of containment, and Tokyo-3 is the n..."

The old woman sighed. "I really don't think it would make a difference in such a situation," she said, a hint of resignation in her weary voice, "while an extra Evangelion in London-2 will have concrete benefits."

And that was that. It was approved.

The Representative for Africa ran a hand over his shaven scalp. "Status of the European Front?" Aires Mocumbi asked, tone clipped. "How are repairs going?"

"Northern Europe is a mess," the Representative for Society, Jeltje Aschear, said, her tone harsh. The skin was drawn tight around her eyes. "The NEGA has taken heavy losses, and the NEGN lost the entire North Atlantic Reserve against Mot. The loss of convoys..."

"Up 34%, year-on-year," Finance interjected.

"Yes, thank you, Carmen," she continued. "Convoy losses against Migou interdiction assets have increased, and they're switching to a roaming-bird model, issuing more antimatter weaponry to their air assets."

"The Engel Group has had very promising results with the new Engel Species based on Harbinger-4," the Representative for Research said, adjusting her blue-tinted glasses. "With a proper air combat Engel, we should be able to..."

"But that's in the future," Representative Aschear interrupted, coldly. "We already have enough pie-in-the-sky Projects and Groups and..."

"The Shamshel has already reached the prototype phase. It will be starting testing within six months, at the outside," Ms Egger stated. "It's not 'pie in the sky'." She smiled, faintly. "Well, it's not pie, at least."

"... and what we need more of is conventional forces!" Aschear slammed her hand down into the desk, making her image shake as she knocked her own camera. "It is _logistics_ that matter, and if the Migou can choke us, split our lines of transfer to joined landmasses, then we are _defeated!_" Gritting her teeth, the woman sighed. "I forwards a motion that the Ashcroft Foundation, as a whole, promote funding for the NEGN, with a _pro bono_ effort to get more factories capable of building more capital and corvette-grade hulls. We _need_ ships!"

"Then perhaps, Jeltje," Representative Egger said, with a twist of her head, "you could suggest that the Navy to stop wasting resources on things like Project Daeva, and put the resources into conventional forces." The corner of her mouth twitched up, and she shot a sideways glance at Gendo.

"That is not an option," he stated, ignoring her, and moving to take control of the conversation. "Project Daeva is the Navy's ploy against what they see as our undue influence in the fields of R&D, just as they also have Project Osiris to play against the Herkunft and Amunet Groups. It would be acceptable if they would just improve conventional weapon platforms, but what they have done is wasteful."

"Such... pettiness is foolish," the Representative for Research agreed. "Of course, the Evangelion Group going public will take the wind from the sails of Project Daeva."

The Representative for South America smirked, red eyes glinting. "It is a tragedy that the Evangelions will suggest that Project Daeva is obsolete before it even got out of the testing phase," she remarked. "And because of the methods used, individuals from Herkunft, Engel, Evangelion and Achtzig will be on their evaluation board. If they must fuse technologies like that, the NEG would be ill-suited if they were insufficiently safe."

"What a shame," Representative Egger agreed, insincerely. The Representative for Research grinned. "We did warn them that such a project was flawed from the start, and would be obsolete before it was finished, didn't we?"

Gendo smiled, face concealed behind his gloves. "Yes," he said. "Six years ago."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**13th of October, 2091**

Slumped on his desk, his headphones drowning out the sound of the rest of the classroom, Shinji Ikari was feeling both melancholic and annoyed. This was not exactly a rare occurrence. It was, in fact, common enough that he was aware that he was feeling like this, and the fact that he knew it was a common state of affairs was contributing to the annoyance.

For one, he was a child soldier being used as a weapon against horrific monstrosities, and worse yet, just because his particular blasphemy against all that was right in the natural world was damaged, didn't mean that he got to miss training sessions. They just put him in simulators instead. And today was a Wednesday, so he got to spend this afternoon in simulator practice, drowning in LCL despite the fact the fluid wasn't necessary for the practice session to work. For two, there was a guardian-teacher conference today, and he was just sure that either Misato would turn up in inappropriate clothing and thus embarrass him, he would be made aware by his teachers just how much he was lagging behind due to his 'illnesses' and the general lack of free time, or, he thought morosely, both.

And for three, it was his birthday today.

"Happy birthday to me," he muttered, slumping down further and letting the music wash over him.

From certain points of view, he might be said to be making a bit of a melodrama over it. Yuki and Gany had called him this morning, and he had received a very enthusiastic rendition of 'Happy Birthday' from a pair of six-year olds. His inbox had been flooded with the normal automatic birthday greetings from various companies and organisations, and some 'Happy Birthday' messages from people he had known back in Tokyo-3 and a few people here in London-2. He had, once again, received his present from his father. A fabrication template had been added to his personal Intellectual Property Library, just as one had every year before; a cold, sterile message accompanying the gift. It would be more meaningful if it _meant _anything, if it wasn't, every year, an item recommended by Shinji's muse based on his buying preferences. It would also be more meaningful if it wasn't an Ashcroft fabtemplate, so his father had probably got a massive discount on it. The man probably had a subroutine set up to buy the present without having to become aware of the date, the boy thought bitterly.

He hadn't even scheduled buildtime for it on the nanofac. And that was despite the fact that he had wanted a new PCPU, because he was still using the borrowed one after his one had been crushed in the Harbinger-3 mess. The dull automation of the 'gift' from his father made it worse for Shinji than if he'd paid for it himself.

His fingers drummed out a repetitive beat on the table, as the sounds of the rest of the class washed over him. Besides him, Toja chatted loudly with a shorter _nazzada_, discussing something which they'd seen last night, while Kensuke was hunched over his PCPU, an external keyboard plugged into the device, fingers clacking away. Towards the back of the room, Dathan, the one who Shinji remembered was heavily involved with the OIS Cadets, blathered on at a short _nazzady_ with a ponytail... Jony, that was her name, the one who had talked to him on his first day. She seemed to be mostly ignoring him. And at the front of the classroom, there was a quiet conversation going on between the Class Representative and the Student Council Representative, the two _amlaty_ looking more awake than most of the rest of the students, on the subject of plays. And their relevance to the class.

Shinji was pretty sure that he'd be able to get out of that. Put simply, he didn't have the time.

"Did you forwards the minutes to the drama club too?" Hikary asked her sort-of-friend.

Ayesha shrugged, tucking a stray wisp of hair back into her headscarf. "Yes," she said, her accent – a mixture of Nazzadi and Arabic – initially hard to place, and, if one were to ask male members of the class, rather attractive. "None of them have replied yet... anyway, I did cee-cee you in on it."

"I know. I was just wondering if they'd just replied to you."

A shake of her head. "No. Because they're drama club. And so all useless idiots."

"Be nice to them," Hikary warned.

Ayesha snorted. "No, we wouldn't want to upset the drama queens, would we? Well, yes, I would, but that was my own rhetorical question so I should probably shut up right now."

The Class Representative raised her eyebrows.

"Yeah, yeah," the headscarved girl said, flapping a hand at her. "Next question."

The raised eyebrows furrowed into a glare, before the _amlaty_ shrugged at her fellow xenomix. "Actually, I do have one," Hikary said. "Got any ideas for what should be put on the list? I don't."

"Nope," Ayesha said, drily.

"Helpful. Really helpful."

"Look, I'm only on the student council because it looks good on the list of stuff I do. I even stood on a policy of 'the student council has no real authority'." She rolled her eyes. "Making decisions would be against my campaign promises."

"I can't believe people voted for you," Hikary said, with a hint of sullenness in her voice.

The other girl pursed her lips. "Most people are idiots one way or another. And despite that, they still voted for the Truth. Even if it's a painful one for people like you who are _adorably_ idealistic." Her face suddenly went blank. "Anyway, don't worry. Surely you can just go ask Taly. I'm sure she'll be _glad_ to help."

Hikary groaned at that. "Not helpful," she muttered.

"What's not helpful?" the aforementioned _nazzady _asked, drifting over to the table with a flick of her red-streaked hair.

"Nothing. It's not interesting. Please, go away Taly."

Two red eyes narrowed, and the taller girl straightened up slightly, glaring down at the two seated girls. "Okay, if you're going to be like that, _Horaki_."

Hikary gritted her teeth. "I didn't want to talk to you."

"_I_was actually going to ask you about plays and your opinions," Ayesha said, intruding before the conversation degenerated further. "Boring student council stuff."

"Okay, I'm interested," Taly agreed, before adding, proudly, "Remember, _Sola Homosapa oa Garemeta_was my idea, last year, and it was a triumph."

"Yes," Hikary remarked, more than a little bitterness in her voice, "if you count the fact that we got marked down as a class, because of the fact that we did it, as a triumph."

"Says the person with _nazzadukivility_ issues who can't appreciate anything outside the dominant _anfrazzadi _cultural paradigm which attempts to force homogeneity on..."

"That is not at all relevant!"

"Well, I'll leave you two lovebirds," Ayesha drawled, stepping back, and receiving two hostile glares in response. "Taly, just make me a shortlist, and I can go show it to dramsoc and see what they think."

"That's not helping, Ayesha."

"Yeah. Ha ha, I don't think. I'll do it, but... look, you're asking a favour of me, so could you be less of a... a bitch, okay?"

"My mistake," the other girl said, slumping down in her seat and pulling out her PCPU, while the _amlaty_ and the _nazzady _resumed their debate. "Now, how long do we need to wait for the dramatic kiss?" Ayesha remarked, in a stage whisper, to laughter from the rest of the class, who apparently had been roused from their apathy and tiredness to watch the argument.

"Shut up, Ayesha!" came a synchronised response.

Shinji snorted, and rested his head back down on his arms, only to be roused almost immediately by a tap on his shoulder. It was an _amlaty_, a pair of violet eyes staring out from under blue-streaked hair, a smile on her face. The boy blinked. Her name... name... uh... 'R'-something...

He forced himself to smile. "Hi?" he asked.

"Hey," she said, her hands folded in front of her. "Not looking forwards to the parents... well, guardians in my case... conference?"

"Trying to forget about it," he groaned, slumping down again.

"That bad?"

Shinji blinked. "Yes," he said, slightly more slowly. "Well, I've been... ill a lot this term, and I transferred late, and..." Shinji didn't mention the fact that he wasn't looking forwards to Misato being there for him to... damn it, still couldn't remember her name. Firstly, it wasn't actually any of her business, and Shinji had never been the most open of people. And, secondly, what was he supposed to say? 'I'm worried that my guardian might show up in a strappy top, and embarrass me in front of people, and then I'll have to put up with more than just Toja and Kensuke making eyes at her'? Better to stay quiet, and shrug. "Well. Yeah," he said out loud, looking up at the brown-grey skinned girl. "I don't know how sympathetic the teachers are going to be."

She nodded sympathetically. "That is pretty bad," she said, leaning forwards, slightly. "Listen." She hefted the PCPU in her hand. "I'm having a party on Saturday... it'll be an evening thing, so we can still have the afternoon for stuff, after morning classes. I'm inviting a lot of people, do you want to come? You're feeling better, right?"

Inwardly, Shinji groaned. He wouldn't _mind_ doing it, probably, but he had training scheduled then. As usual. Despite that Unit 01 still wasn't working after the damage that Mot had inflicted, and the fact that Unit 00 had been given priority for repairs because they wanted to get on Eva operational, they would still go and stick him in the entry plug, for synch tests. Which were fairly pointless, in his opinion; certainly, far more pointless than the simulator training that he did afterwards, because at least Shinji could see the reason that training in a simulator could be useful, rather than just sitting in the plug with his eyes closed, listening to the babble of people tracking a number, when he – which was to say, the Evangelion - couldn't even move. And another thing...

"Uh... hello?" the girl asked. "My face is up here."

Shinji blinked. "Sorry," he apologised, blushing, eyes raised from where they had drifted to when he zoned out. "Uh," he added, pinching the bridge of his nose, "I'll have to see if I'm free." He groaned. "And if I'm kept in... after this teacher thing," the boy added, as a spur-of-the-moment justification, which he was somewhat proud of. "I don't think Rei would be free, either."

The girl looked at him strangely. "Why would I inv... what, are you friends with her?"

"Uh. Not exactly friends, I mean we've talked a bit, nothing serious, she's quiet, no big deal... uh..." The boy trailed off. Probably best not to mention the whole 'nudity' thing. Or the 'saved each other's lives' bit, though for a different reason.

A pair of eyebrows raised. "Well, I suppose it's good for her to make friends; she's been in the class for years, and she just sits there, being... Rei. If you've managed to get through to her, that's more than I've ever managed." A shrug. "I'll send an invite to your gridlink... and hers too, then," the _amlaty_said. "Try to make it if you can." With a nod and a smile, she drifted off, to talk to other people.

Shinji slid back down, shaking his head. That just wasn't fair. Now it was going to look like a deliberate snub when he couldn't make it to the party. And...

"Hey, Kensuke," he asked, leaning across, speaking softly. "Who was that?"

"That? You mean Reyokhy? Sounded like her," the bespectacled boy asked, without looking up from his own PCPU. "Blue streaks in her hair, got Hispanic blood on her human side?"

"Yeah, probably," Shinji said. "That is, yes."

Sliding a finger across the screen of his handheld device, Kensuke turned to face Shinji. "What'd she want, anyway?"

"She wanted me to come to a party on Saturday."

On his other side, Toja nodded. "Yeah, she does that sort of thing a lot. Her guardians are pretty lenient with her... and she is _rather_hot. They're usually pretty fun... you coming?"

Shinji winced. "Probably not," he admitted. "I have... I'm going to be busy with practice, like I am every Saturday evening."

Kensuke snorted. "I didn't get an invite," he muttered, eyes flicking back down.

"'Cause that's a really big shock," Toja interjected, with a smirk. "Don't think you'd even go... or if you did, you'd stay in the corner with your MP."

"That's not true!"

Toja's eyes glinted, and he grinned, broadly. "Oh, wait, no. I remember now."

"Don't say it."

"You'd go and show off that you're a lightweight. And be almost catatonic after two beers."

Kensuke flushed. "Someone spiked those drinks, okay!"

"Weren't they cans?"

"You could spike cans by...like, changing the label!"

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The door to the classroom slid open, letting in a cool breeze, and a pale figure padded in, her skin and hair a stark contrast to the black of the uniform's overcoat. In her hand was a pink slip, which she handed to the homeroom teacher.

"Medical appointment," Rei said, tersely.

"Oh, right, yes," the elderly man said with a nod, after scanning over the form. "Matches the email... okay, just sit down, we've already taken registration so..." he trailed off, as the girl stepped away, heading towards her customary seat at the back of the room. The noise of the classroom, which had dipped slightly, rose again.

Standing up, Shinji ran a hand over his face, and took a breath. Then he reached into his bag, and withdrew a book, an old-style paper one. It was better that he do this now, rather than wait until later.

If he waited, he might have to visit her home again to return it, for one.

Ignoring a slight sense of vertigo, no doubt from standing up so quickly, he made his way over to her. The girl had hung her bag up on her Desk, but had not booted it up yet, instead staring out the window to the artificial dome environment outside.

"Ahem," he said, clearing his throat. She wasn't going to look at him otherwise, it seemed, which was rather awkward. "Um. Uh. Sorry for taking so long, but here's your book back."

"Your opinion," Rei asked, in an unquestioning tone, still staring out the window. He was feeling a little discomfited by her continued refusal to make eye contact.

"I have... um... to admit, it didn't make much sense," Shinji admitted. "It seemed to assume a bunch of stuff I didn't know. I was a bit foggy at the time, because of the tiredness. And... well," he let out a short laugh, "...also the painkillers."

Rei blinked. "It is the third book in the series."

"I... see," Shinji said, slowly. One hand went up to massage his neck. "Yeah... that would explain a lot." His lips twitched. "Sorry. But... uh... why did you..."

"I am," the girl paused, for a fraction of a section, "fond of this book." Her hand reached out, thin fingers brushing against the cover. "It was a present. It feels right."

"Oh, okay." The boy looked around, eyes skipping over the _sidocy_. He didn't follow why that meant that she had to give him the third book, rather than the first one. Maybe the others weren't very good. Or... yes, this _was_ Rei, after all. At least she had all her clothes on.

"Well... it was interesting enough," he blurted out, "and it'll probably make more sense once I read the plot summary and... thank you." He blinked, as Rei picked the book up, and, still looking out the window, flicked through it without a glance.

"It is not damaged," she said, after a moment.

Nervously, compulsively, Shinji brushed some imaginary dirt off his sleeve, and made a noise of agreement. "Well, uh, I'll be seeing you this afternoon, and..."

"Yes."

His flow slightly disrupted, he nevertheless continued, "... so I hope that, uh, the conference goes well for you."

"It will." She placed the book back down on the table. "My academic standards are satisfactory."

He snorted. "Mine aren't."

"Try harder." The words were cold and razor sharp, and Shinji almost bristled at their immediacy, before a motion out the window caught his attention. The doors, on the far side of the dome, which led to the adjoining train station had opened. Already, stationed in position across the school grounds were the bulky forms of power armour, three metre high figures that stood like silent sentinels. There was something disturbingly un-alive about them, a mechanical lack of motion which reminded the viewer that the human pilot was only a single component in the warmachine. The bulky, human-sized figures in SP-armour with their oversized weapons cradled in their arms were a relief.

Shinji was pretty sure that the ecstatic noise of glee to his left was Kensuke.

A motley crowd of adults was swarming through, now that their security profiles had been cleared; the delay enough to allow the youngsters to get in, and to their homerooms first. The mix of clothing they were wearing was quite in contrast to the regiments of black-overcoated students who normally passed through. Even from this distance, and through the window, Shinji could hear the buzz of automated speaker systems kindly requesting that they stick to the path and keep off the grass of the playing fields. He could also see that these requests were not being followed.

The parents and guardians had arrived.

Squinting, Shinji peered at the crowd. Was that... yes, that was Misato. At least she was wearing business dress, rather than, say, the strappy yellow top she tended to wear around the house, although, as she got nearer, Shinji was rather of the opinion that her outfit was a _little _too form-hugging. And the top two buttons didn't look buttoned, if he squinted a bit.

He sighed, with a glance sideways at the other students at the window. Call him paranoid, but he was _sure _that they were paying rather more attention to her than he would like. It was probably just...

"Wow," Kensuke exhaled, sliding open the window, camera in hand. "Major Katsuragi looks even better than she did the last time. And... zoo~ooom, wow. What I wouldn't give to see her in a full BDU, with a large gun... maybe even SP-armour!"

... right. Well, it seemed he wasn't paranoid, Shinji thought. The world really _was_ out to get him.

And then another cycle of motion, and a pair of scout mecha, painted white, emerged from unseen compartments built into the wall of the arcology dome. The figures, long-limbed, hybridising quasi-organic and utilitarian aesthetics, loped into their positions, over twice the height of even the bulky power armour, and set up a vigil.

If there was some small mercy, Shinji thought, it was that the sight of such things had distracted Kensuke from the sight of Misato. The other boy was making high pitched noises, and being harassed by Taly, to make sure that he was getting all the pictures of the mecha that he could.

But even that conversation was not enough to dissuade Shinji's line of thought, because he was fairly sure that there was only one man who could dignify such an excessive, and, frankly, showy display of protection and force.

A figure emerged from the entrance, flanked by bodyguards, dressed mostly in black, and wearing his customary arglasses. Even from this distance, Shinji could recognise his father.

He suddenly knew who the guest speaker would be this year. It wasn't as if... if that man was going to be there for _him_.

A movement of white in the corner of his eye caught his attention. He looked over, to see Rei waving down, slowly and solemnly, each movement of her hand a precise tick of some unseen metronome. She was smiling slightly, her face unusually animated by her standards.

Shinji looked down to see his father wave back up at Rei, ignoring his biological son completely. He felt rage well up in his stomach, twelve years of suppressed anger at those horrible memories that he didn't think about from the second worst day of his life, immediately after the worst. Silently, he turned on his heel, and strode back to his desk even as the others stared out the window, his lips thin with anger.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

With a sigh, Dr Ritsuko Akagi reached forwards, and tapped the paw of the waving cat before her, stilling it. Then, with a flick, she set the figure back into motion, and returned to her work. The messages from Tola and Sarany all needed a response, there was the conferencing with Dr Schauderhaft over in Chicago-2 about the Unit 02 demonstration, and then there was the nagging presence of the Ministry of War asking for more details about the Evangelions, requests from the Achtzig Group for data to update the strategic schema of the TITANs, the series of meetings with the Representative for Research, oh, and did she mention that she was doing this all with a lack of staff, because a considerable number of people had leave this morning, including Representative Ikari and Misato, meaning that several key people weren't answering emails, and...

There was a bleep, and the woman leant back, noting the caller ID displayed in the upper-right of her vision. "Yes, Maya?" she asked the Operator, nerves humming.

"The detailed analysis of the damage to Unit 01 has been forwarded to me, doctor," the voice of the younger woman said, even as her body floated down in the Operator dive tanks. "Do you want an abridged summary to be prepared, or I can send it straight to you?"

Ritsuko massaged her brow. "A summary would be lovely, Maya," she said, with a slightly forced smile. "I don't have time right now, but I need to know if there's anything important."

"Right away, Doctor Akagi!" Lieutenant Ibuki said enthusiastically, cutting the communication.

The dyed-blonde shook her head slightly. Maya was young... except she wasn't. It wasn't as if there was that much of an age difference between the two; maybe five years, at the most. But she _felt _young. The fact that she, like all the Operators, had cybernetics woven into her spinal cord and cerebrum, didn't seem to have taken away from her natural liveliness at all. It was somehow... a little reassuring to have people like her around.

[Doctor,] said the emotionless voice of her muse. [New mail from Dr Sopheap, marked Urgent.]

Ritsuko sighed, mentally cursed, and got back to work.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

It was dark in the main hall. For the majority of the audience, this was a mildly special occurrence, because the Ashcroft Representative for Europe had chosen to speak here, of all places, and rapt attention had been given to the speech.

Shinji narrowed his eyes at the slightly sycophantic laughter to the end of the speech. He was almost _certain_ that his fa... that the man was just reading it off the inside of his glasses, that he hadn't even bothered to memorise the speech. Bland, meaningless platitudes of... bland meaninglessness. Just as superficial and artificial as the man himself. They were even in the same building, and he hadn't even taken the chance to wish his son happy birthday.

He certainly wasn't about to stand for the round of applause which the headmaster called for. Shinji Ikari merely stayed seated, glaring at his father. Misato nudged him in the side, motioning for him to stand. He chose not to.

"That was a bit rude," the dark-haired woman said, afterwards, as they stood in the corridor outside the assembly hall.

The boy shrugged.

"I know you might not get on, but you could at least have stood," Misato remarked. "I mean, it's not normal for him to give this speech. It's not usual for the European Representative to take time out of his schedule. It's the first time he's done it, and you're here, so..." she trailed off.

"I don't assume my father does anything good for me," Shinji said, drily, trying to stop any other feelings from showing. "It saves disappointment later. In fact," he added, as a thought struck him, "he's probably only here because his Deputy Representative is ill. He is pretty old, after all."

Misato winced a little, a slight cold feeling running down her neck. It was true, Fuyutsuki was over in Geneva-A today, touring some new facilities, but that wasn't necessarily the only reason that Representative Ikari was here. Probably.

And to speak of the devil, here he was, striding past, with his eyes concealed and his jacket streaming behind him, flanked by the inevitable guards. Trailing behind him; cold, fragile-looking, was Rei Ayanami, her customary expression of detachment on her face. She felt, besides her, Shinji shrink back slightly, as that obscured gaze scanned from left to right, settling onto her.

"Major Katsuragi," Representative Ikari said, a factual statement of indemnity.

"Yes, sir." The woman stared back at him, trying to discern his intent, but his eyes were concealed to even the IR and UV of her Eyes. She couldn't tell if he was staring at her for Shinji, or, indeed, neither of them. Perhaps the rows of school photographs behind her were a sight of exquisite fascination.

He tilted his head slightly. "You are prepared for this afternoon?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," she repeated, retreating behind military formality in the awkwardness of this open place.

"Good." A hint of a nod. "I will be waiting. Now. Is it mathematics first?" he asked.

"Yes," said Rei, lurking behind him, hands limp against her sides.

"Okay." White-gloved hands flexed. "We will go see him, then." And he was off again, the crowd parting like the waters before him, no doubt aided by the armoured figures as well as the fact that he had been the one giving the speech. Misato watched him go, not quite sure whether the sheer normalcy of the conversation was disturbing or amusing.

She soon discarded that, though because the boy beside her had gone stock still, nostrils flared, his breathing forced. Misato paused for a moment, caught in indecision, before reaching down to take his wrist. She could feel the muscles corded like wire against the too-thin arm, feel it shake slightly with suppressed feeling, before it went limp. She squeezed his arm, in an attempt at reassurance, and it seemed to work somewhat, because the boy followed her lead, even if he said nothing.

"Come on," Misato said to Shinji. "Let's get this over with, eh?"

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Hikary Horaki smiled to herself, as her father thanked the teacher who handled the Ethics modules. Once again, another glowing report. She couldn't resist looking a little smug, as, seated behind her, Kensuke Aida shuffled up with his father, but that was only for a moment, and she managed to suppress it as she headed down the corridor, confidently leading the way.

"Well, that was good," her father said. His deep voice was almost a rumble; his native Nazzadi accent was almost completely gone. "The Ethics modules aren't just a dead-weight; future employers, especially the Foundation, really do look at them. And universities are so competitive nowadays, especially for the high end."

"I know, Dad," she replied, looking back, her orange eyes meeting his red ones. "I do need straight A1s for everything. And... yes, I think it's English Lit next... that's Mr Daye, brown hair, brown eyes." She rolled her eyes. "A bit of a bumbling academic sort," she remarked.

"Thanks... I think I can remember him. Native accent? Fan of... oh, I can't remember the author."

"Yes, that's the one." Stepping aside, she nodded to Kaga and Tsuka, as their grandmother took the twin boys around, and smoothed down her skirt with one hand. "And it's Koch, the author he raves about. Early twenty-first... or maybe end of twentieth century."

"Ah." Her father let his hand brush against the wall, jet-black against pale blue paint. "Have I said what the current big thing at work is?" he mentioned, casually.

"Oh, Dad," Hikary sighed. "Let me guess... you finally got permission for a new school?"

"It's sort of needed, 'Kary," he said, a hint defensively. "The old surface schools aren't fitting for the modern era, and..."

"... it gives you a chance to get better facilities for the ghettoes?" she teased.

"Yes," the man answered, assertively. "The self-segregationist policies of too many of the poor Nazzzadi harm everyone, themselves included. I keep trying to persuade the L2 Board, in my role as Advisor, that the best way to break the cycle of poverty is..."

"I wasn't making fun of it," Hikary said defensively, a hand going to one of her pigtails. "You don't need to treat me as if I'm a political opponent or anything."

Her father winced, flashing chisel-like incisors. "I'm sorry," the _nazzada_ told his _amlaty_ daughter. "It's been getting rather heated, with those," he glanced around, "Nazzadi Culture League sorts around. And of course, I'm meant to be objective, so I can't let my dislike of them show. Even when I know that they'd keep us poor and unskilled if it meant that they could be 'separate' and preserve a culture which isn't even real." He sighed. "We're all human," he said, forlornly, "yet why do some of us fight it?"

"I _know _how annoying they can be," Hikary said, a hint of weariness in her voice. "And, again, Dad, you don't need to speech-ify at me. Just... try to keep it down, okay?"

He grinned, then. "Heh. You sound just like your mother. And you'd be doing her proud right now with your grades..."

"Dad. Don't try to change the topic by bringing her up."

"Sorry."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Things were not going well, as they went from teacher to teacher, their reports all blurring into one another.

"While I understand the fact that he's been off ill," said the physics teacher, her face rigid, "the amount of homeworks and remedial works that he's missed means that he's severely lagging behind the class mean and the expected level for his year group. If he doesn't want to be looking forwards to resitting a year, he should step up his game _now_."

"He's coasting," said the teacher who taught the Nazzadi language. "I'd guess that he's already fluent, and just took it as an easy option... oh, don't look so surprised." The dark-skinned woman folded her arms. "But even so, I expect the work to actually be done."

"His grasp of history is poor. He doesn't know what happened, or the roots of the current conflicts. If one does not pay attention to the past, how can one know what is happening in the present?"

"... and his presence has been responsible for several noted disruptive influences," was the opinion of the maths teacher, who seemed to be holding a grudge for some reason.

"To be honest, Shinji needs to try harder," the biology teacher said, clinically. "At the moment, he's just not doing well enough."

No, indeed things were not going well.

"Remind me why I can't be privately tutored?" he asked Misato, bitterly, as they headed off to the next teacher who was no doubt going to blame him for something that wasn't his fault.

The woman sighed. "It's complicated," she said, simply. "From what I can tell, the programme is really set up before... um," she looked around, aware of the fact that they were in an insecure location, "things really started to happen. So back then, getting a guarantee that you get to keep normal schooling was a good thing. But... we didn't expect for the timing to be what it was like. We'll probably look to getting you a tutor, though."

"Oh. Joy," Shinji sighed. That looked like it was more of his free time gone.

"And it does you good to be out and about and have a life of your own to worry about," she added. "Imagine how boring life would be if everything was easy."

"Yes. That's what I'm worrying about. Being bored."

Misato snorted. "That's the spirit," she said, with a grin.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The teacher crossed her legs nervously, and shifted, gripping the PCPU with her notes on tighter. She ran her tongue across her lips, and took a breath, swallowing yet again. Her eyes flicked between the cold grey gaze of her student, and the eyeless stare of her guardian.

"Um..." began Ms Sweet-Corazon. "So... Rei's performance in her physics modules so far this term..."

The girl stared at her, barely blinking. Representative Ikari was just as still.

"... her academic... uh... performance is good... excellent, actually, and... uh..." She shivered slightly. "Uh..." she continued, trying to steel herself, to continue along the notes that she had made for herself, "... I do believe that she has a certain attitude problem in lessons?" Inwardly, the teacher cursed. That shouldn't have come out as a question. But this man was _disconcerting_. No wonder Rei Ayanami was as she was.

Before her, Representative Ikari tilted his head slightly. "Continue," he stated, one gloved finger going up to push his arglasses back up to the bridge of his nose.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

It was the disappointment that was getting to him, Shinji thought morosely. A certain air of patronising disapproval, which indicated that they were being _very understanding_ about how much he was off ill, but he was _pushing their patience_, and should _try harder_ to keep up. And he was fairly sure that he could track the teachers that his father had got to first, because he could feel them scrutinising him, as more than just another pupil. The one he wasn't sure about was the maths teacher, and Shinji suspected that the man probably hadn't forgiven him for being responsible for the heavily armoured soldiers breaking down his door to recover the pilot, for what had turned out to be a false alarm.

About the only person he'd seen who looked as bad as he felt was Taly, one of the girls from his class, who had been sitting sullenly beside a woman who looked barely to be in her twenties. The _nazzady_'s skin and red-streaked black hair stood as a stark contrast to the peroxide blonde human. He had exchanged a wincing, sympathetic nod with her, and received a smile in return, but it really wasn't that much.

And now this.

"Oh, Shinji is doing well, despite his illnesses," the balding man said, with a toothy smile. "He's not quite good enough for the first team, but with a bit more practice, he could be on the bench, eh, and he's doing a really good job keeping fit despite all those illnesses. I mean, I have to tell you, there's a boy two years below who's off all the time, and he's a spindly little thing, but Shinji has good physicals all around. Sound about right?"

"Yes," the boy replied, flatly.

The sports teacher missed any lack of enthusiasm. "A real problem with a lot of kids these days," he continued to Misato, his eyes rather lower than they should have been. "They just don't get the exercise. I mean, you really have to _try _nowadays, and arcology life means if you don't go to the gyms... well, these younger lot, eh? They think diets are the same as eating properly and burning it off, and are all scrawny and useless at sports!"

Misato nodded. "Yes," she said, with a nod, as she looked him up and down. "I apologise for asking," the Major said, "but... you're ex-military, right? Infantry by the build?"

The man grinned wider. "Yep. Groundpounder all the way. Served in Ghana and was there for Madagascar. You? Look like a flygirl or an earthshaker, from the body."

"The second," the woman replied, with a smug grin. "Heavy assault mecha. Now on secondment to the Foundation."

The teacher laughed, a noisy exhalation of breath which drew stares from the other people waiting. "Listen, Shinji, that woman," he pointed at Misato, "is officially nuts. But in a good way," he added, with a sideways glance. "'Least flygirls are nice and up in the air. People like her?"

"What's the point in having time to know you're going to crash?" Misato completed.

"That!" The sports teacher ran a hand over his head. "Yes," he continued, "you're doing well, Shinji. Just try to be less ill, okay?"

"I'll try my best," the boy said, with a smile which was only a little forced.

Had he really sunk that low? Was he really looking for praise from one of the sports teachers? It said something about the day that he was having that Shinji didn't mind the depths he had sunk to. Even if it meant that to the teachers, he was 'not that bright, but good at sports', which sadly wasn't enough at an Ashcroft Academy.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Ryoji Kaji leant back on the hard chair, PCPU in hand, and idly scrolled through channels. Asuka was in the changing rooms, getting dressed in her plug suit, and... he stretched out and yawned... it was too early in the morning to be up and about like this. With a groan, he pulled himself to his feet, and went in search of something that did coffee. He would ideally like a cafeteria, but he would settle for instant coffee, if needs be.

Well, actually, he would ideally like a extra-hot, no-whip, white chocolate macchiato served by scantily clad ladies who would also be willing to give him a massage to remedy his stiff back, but the chances of him getting that on this military base were... not good.

Flicking through, he selected the NABO News channel, and spared a glance at the elegantly coifed man reading the early morning news. A flick, and he purchased the rewatch, and then turned the screen off, ambling idly through the halls. He stroked his chin. He needed to shave, Kaji thought; the stubble was getting to the stage where it was stopping being stubble, and starting to be a beard. Well, he hadn't had time early in the morning, and Asuka had been hogging the bathroom.

Of all the things that he had found as her temporary guardian, all the oddities and abnormalities, she was still very much a teenage girl in that one particular aspect. And a few other ones.

There was a bleep as Kaji scanned the chip in the back of his hand, and the vending machine hummed and whirred, and eventually spat out an overpriced cup of hot chocolate. The man took a sip, and grimaced. They'd been out of coffee, and this wasn't good at all. Still, at least it was warm, and would do something to keep him awake. He checked his PCPU again, and noted the new message. Switching to harcontact mode, the lens fused to the front of his eyeballs initialised, and he sat down, drinking his vile drink.

Because, as the news had been going on, all sort of clever technology behind the scenes had been associating a squirt of noise into the public datafeed with a one-time pad on his PCPU. And once the decyption was done, he now had his orders.

[Agent Doorknob. Approval has been given to your transfer. The resources are in place. Pathway is open at ABN on assigned date.]

Well. This was it, then.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The spoon clinked against the side of the cup of tea. Weighting the teabag, Shinji stared down into the brown depths, before letting go. It still had to be left to stew for a while.

"See," Misato said, through her mouthful of noodles, "... that wasn't so bad, was it?" The chatter of the cafe around them, located deeper than the school, but still in the main portion of L2 rather that the Geocity, was a constant background noise. In his school uniform, he stood out among the neatly dressed professionals. He suspected, strongly, that if it wasn't for the bodyguards he was sure were all around him, he would have been asked why he wasn't in school by the ArcSec officers on the way here.

Misato blended in perfectly.

Glowering slightly, lips pursed, Shinji nonetheless nodded, and agreed, because it seemed like the easiest thing to do. "I suppose not," he said, tapping his fingers against the synthwood surface of the table. He couldn't resist adding, "And, of course, they wouldn't be complaining if they took into account how little free time I have, and how much time I've been..." he sighed, looking around the public area. "How much I've been ill this term."

"Yeah, well." A half-shrug and a slurp as she took another mouthful of noodles . "Come on, Shinji, eat your soup," the dark-haired woman said, changing the topic. "Or drink your soup or... is it thick enough to eat, rather than drink? Anyway. You've got a busy afternoon ahead." She paused, tilting her head slightly. "And," she added, more gently, "I think you did okay."

"Really?" Shinji asked, cynically.

"Yes," Misato said, her voice definitive. "Certainly much better than I was doing at your age." There was a slight silence, before she added, "And... look, speaking as... well, in my role, I... I'm sort of asking you as a favour here, don't take it personally against Rei. He's her guardian, so he had to attend." Except he didn't, she knew, considering his position, and she resolved to look into it a little deeper. There were certain... similarities in appearance between the First and Third Children, beyond their ethnicities, after all. "Blame him if you want to, but... try not to feel jealous of her."

"I'm not jealous," Shinji snapped. "She's welcome to him."

Misato declined to comment, and instead chose to change the subject. "Come on then, eat up."

The boy grumbled, but complied. Fishing out the teabag with a spoon, he took a sip, and then moved onto the soup, scooping up a chunk of protein in the first spoonful. It tasted of chicken. Not like the LCL that he would be spending the afternoon breathing, and swallowing, and tasting. It never got better. Although that reminded him;

"Misato?"

"Hmm?" She seemed to be slightly wary.

"Um." Playing with the spoon, he tapped it against the side of the mug, until he realised what he was doing, and stopped. "I... that is, I've been invited to a par... to do something with some friends this weekend, and I was wondering if I could be excused from... that is, if I can go. I mean, uh, I'd just be doing things on computers, rather than for real, and so it doesn't really count in the same way, does it?"

He noticed the way that Misato stiffened up slightly, her face rigid and mask-like. "Your activity schedule is fixed; you can't just have time off," the Major stated, her voice flat. "Especially... well, we can talk about it when we get down to the Geocity, yes?"

With a groan, mostly suppressed, Shinji nodded. It wasn't like it had been too likely that he would have got to go, anyway, was it? He was a hero saving panhumanity, apparently, and seemingly that meant that his time was state property. If... if only they sort of understood that there was a person at the heart of the giant ACXB war machine.

"If it helps, I'm sorry for this." The cold expression broke, and Misato grinned. "And," she added, with a grin, "there's going to be something interesting for you to see down there. It might change your mind about a few things."

Shinji sighed inwardly. That sounded like it was going to be unpleasant, no matter what Misato thought.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

It was early morning in Chicago-2, clear and warm. This was not directly relevant down in the deep military bunkers, which remained at their constant light levels, but the bright autumnal day was somehow pervasive, even down here.

"Ah, it looks good, Captain. We have clearance confirmation on the test; security cybirds are in place, and report an all-clear for hostile unmanifested ENEs," said Dr Shauderhauft, drumming his fingers against the wall as he stared at the weather projections on his bulky argoggles. "We're going public, and it looks good for us. It's a brand new day, and the sun is high." Perfect weather for such a public demonstration, as they both knew.

The Deputy Director of Operations responsible for Unit 02 groaned, elbows resting on the railings, as he stared at the titanic face of the Evangelion. It had been repainted in a flat military grey for this test, and it made the behemoth feel somewhat soulless. "You better not be slipping," he muttered.

"Huh?"

"A single technical mistake and everything could go wrong. Everybody will be watching. And if this goes wrong, I'm blaming you, Wilhelm."

Plug suit already donned, cowl down, A10 clips in place, Test Pilot Soryu made a disgusted noise. "It won't go wrong, Captain Martello," she said, her tone clipped, eyes jumping between the two older men. "I will make _no_ mistakes, and my test display was _perfect_."

"Well." The shrug, and the tone of voice said everything to the teenager, and she bristled, before forcing herself to relax in front of her superior.

"Were there any flaws in _my_ performance in the test run, _sir_?" she asked, letting a hint of sarcasm creep in.

"There _is _such a thing as overconfidence."

"Indeed there is," an older man said, the click of his shoes echoing in the storage bay. In the brightness of the storage facility, his dark suit, the shirt a deep, deep red sucked at the light, the authorisation entopics floating around it visible to anyone tuned into the right band.

"Ah." Captain Martello cleared his throat. "Uh, Professor Sylveste. What are... that is, this is a restricted zone, and..."

"... and I am no longer a member of Project Evangelion?" the man asked, one eyebrow raising elegantly. And then he waited, his silence uncomfortable for the staff of the modern Evangelion Group.

Asuka smirked.

"Have you come to wish us luck?" Dr Shauderhauft ventured.

"Luck?" A twitch of the mouth, a crinkle of the eyes. "No." And then a faint sneer creased his face. "Luck is for people who aren't _good_ enough. If I was here to wish you _luck_," and the disgust was evident, "I would be telling you that I think you needed it."

"Oh, _thank you_, Uncle Cal," the red-blonde girl said, a smile on her face. That was high praise from him, and she treasured it. He was one of the few people who she could accept such words from as genuine and earned. "The captain seems to have his doubts, but," she giggled, a girlish and unprofessional display of emotion, "I suppose he just hasn't been involved with the Group _long enough_."

"I think..."

"You may be right there, Asuka," the man with the rust-coloured hair said, smiling. "Now, I would like some time with Asuka before she is loaded," said Calvin, tilting his head. Despite the phrasing, it was not a request. And although he was not part of the Evangelion Group any more, he had been part of the original Project, and was the head the Herkunft Group, a man who, together with Naoko Akagi, had been instrumental behind the LITAN system in the Eva. Such an individual was not a man one wished to needlessly aggravate. "Alone."

The man and the girl stood alone in silence, until they were the only two standing there. Just as the Captain had before him, Dr Calvin Sylveste sighed, and stared at the mask of Unit 02. "You know," he said, glancing over to Asuka, but his voice soft as if he were almost talking to himself, "I never thought this day would come."

"Why not?" the girl asked, with a half-shrug. "You shouldn't be so pessimistic, Uncle. I was always going to be good enough for the Evangelion Project to go public... in fact, I was good enough two years ago. It's just they _finally_ seem to have decided to acknowledge it."

The two of them stood in silence, before the man sighed. "Asuka," he began, "before you go, before the demonstration... I had intended to give this to you on that dinner we had together, but..."

"... but a Harbinger interrupted," the girl interjected.

"... yes. And there never seemed to be the moment." There was a snort. "That was the real reason for the dinner," he said, darkly. "But, here."

The box he passed to Asuka was rosewood, and from its weight and feel, it was genuine, not just a thin texture imprinted on plastics. Even through the thinner material at the fingertips of the plugsuit, she could feel the whorls and bumps; a sniff, and the scent of old varnish filled her nostrils. The sides were engraved with a recurring ribosomal motif. After a moment's examination, she flipped the catch at the front, and her eyes widened at the contents.

Within the archaism of the ancient box was a fully modern containment unit, sealed utterly by the fact that it had been constructed around the thing that was to be protected. Through the adamant faceplate, Asuka could see something brownish and curved, part of some greater object, like a piece of pottery or...

"... a skull?" was her response, as she lifted the sealed unit out of the box. Now that she could see more of it, it was clearly a skull, one of an adult, with the lower jaw bone missing. The bones were the colour of mud, and one of the eye sockets was heavily damaged, the jagged breaks a contrast to the smooth curve of the other socket.

"Yes."

Her blue Eyes met his, one eyebrow raised. "Why? Why would I want a skull piece? And _who's_?"

Almost reflexively, the man ran a hand through his rust-coloured hair, now greying from age. "No one you know," Calvin remarked, the corners of his eyes crinkling up, although the girl could see the disappointment in his eyes.

Asuka flinched at that. She _hated_ to disappoint Uncle Cal, and her breath sped up, her mind whirring. What did he want? What did he expect her to know that she didn't and what had she missed and what was she doing wrong and _what did she need to do to make him happy again_and...

"Unless you're about 170,000 years old, of course," he added.

She let out a breath. Information. Yes. A clue. He was letting it out and she had to work it out and... "Archaic _homo sapiens_," she said, Eyes narrowing, as she tried to control her breath. "No... 170,000 years ago, that's... there are both archaic and anatomically modern examples at the time." She gazed up at him. "I... I don't know. There isn't enough information yet."

There was a gentle sigh from the man. "Asuka, I'm not trying to test you."

He _always_ did this! He always tested her. What did he want? What game was he playing right now? What did he _want?_"Looking at it... I d-don't think it's an ape one, and..."

"Calm down." There was a slightly sharp note in his voice, now. "It's a present." The man glanced over at Unit 02, running one hand along the neatly trimmed beard. "Yes, it's an example of anatomically modern _homo sapiens_, from around 170,000 years ago; part of the skull."

Asuka stared down at it. "Well... um." She swallowed. "Thank you." There was an awkward silence. She glanced up at the man, who was staring back at her, as if looking for some other response. "Thank you very much, Uncle Cal," she said, before closing it, and giving him a hug, which he seemed to freeze up at, not shrinking away, or reciprocating. "I... I can't say I was expecting it, and it isn't my birthday for a while, but... yes," she continued, her voice growing stronger, "... today is a special day, after all."

"You're welcome," he said, finally, before smiling. "Your mother gave it to me as a present, before you were born," he continued. "About two years before... yes, that would have been in '73 or so. You're old enough, and you've grown up enough that... well, especially today, I felt I should return it." And then he returned the hug, hands clad in sterile gloves squeaking against the outer material of her plug suit. "Kyoko would have been proud to see how you turned out," he said, staring over her shoulder at the four eyes of the Evangelion. "Even without her influence."

Asuka bit her lip, and hugged tighter. "Thank you," she said, voice soft. And then she looked down, and coughed. "Um. Can you hold on to this for me, Uncle Cal?" she asked, as she let go of him. She ran her hands down her body. "Sort of lacking pockets here," she explained, with a smirk.

"Oh. Yes. Right. Of course."

Footsteps behind them. "Asuka," Kaji said, a half-smile on his lips. "They want you in the plug now."

"Oh, good," the girl said, spinning to beam at the ponytailed man. "You'll be watching, won't you, Kaji? A chance for them to see how amazing I can be, and you can be my lucky charm, yes?"

"Sure, why not?" The man shrugged. "Of course, I'm not allowed into the entry plug, but I'll be in the stands."

Asuka grinned. "Okay!" she said, over her shoulder, as she skipped over to the entry port. "I knew you'd be there, and this is going to be good! Just watch me closely, Kaji!"

The GIA agent was uncomfortably aware of the head of the Achtzig Group glaring at him.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"01-Nerv reports green on limited synch test, although activation is sealed off due to damage."

"00-Selee is fully operational in Unit 00 and is ready."

"We have confirmation that both Ouranous LITANs are green, Dr Akagi."

Shinji hiccupped, and tasted bile in the LCL that filled his mouth, before it was washed away by the all-consuming tang of the orange fluid. Of all the things they made him do, carrying out synch tests in Unit 01, when it was still heavily damaged and inoperable, was probably one of the least painful. That didn't make it not-pointless.

"Ready," he informed Misato, flexing his fingers around the butterfly grips. "Let's get this over and done with, so you can stick me in the training simulation. And then it can be time to shoot at Asherah. Again."

Major Katsuragi appeared in his left eye. "Actually, no, we'll be doing something different."

Shinji blinked. "Oh joy," he said. "Of course, you'll be adding Mot to the training simulators now.

"No, I..."

"That was my favourite bit, the bit when the bomb went off in my chest. Even better than the bit when I got shot and died." He swallowed. "I _do_hope that I get to do it again."

A second window joined the first one. "That is not true, Test Pilot Ikari," the milky-skinned girl stated. "You do not wish to do so again."

The boy's eyes narrowed and he looked away, hands clenching around the butterfly controls. He... he wasn't sure how he felt about Rei, now. His previous confusion had collapsed into perplexity. She was brave and mentally strong and he owed her his life and she _had_ bought him a book. But she was also off-putting, and above that, his father seemed to pay more attention to her than he did to him. The man had attended _her_ parent's day, and ignored him even when they were in the same class. The boy had seen him smile at her; he had never seen that. And she had _hit _him when he had said something which, if it had been said about another man, would have been an insult, but which for his father was merely a statement of fact.

Shinji Ikari understood, intellectually, that it was not Rei's fault that his father only ever wanted to use him, and would bribe him with casual offerings to obtain loyalty, but never give him anything that mattered. That didn't change how he felt.

Why _would_ his father effectively adopt a _sidocy _like her, anyway?

"Look left, Test Pilot Ikari," instructed one of the Operators, intruding into the conversation. "We want to check the vision calibration, because Nerv isn't synching with the superconducting QUI devices... they're still in damage-constrained mode. So just look at the red lights when they appear... sorry, Major, but we're going to have to go to Audio Only for this."

"Okay," the Major said. "So we're going to _not _put you against a sim of Mot, okay? Feel better?"

A bit, the boy had to admit.

"This is going to be purely conventional training, against smaller targets... man-sized to tank-sized," she continued.

"Look left, Ikari. Please," added the operator, running the checklist.

Shinji complied, but groaned. "Dealing with smaller enemies?" he asked. "What's the point of that?" He squeezed tighter on the control yokes, wanting to get the synch test over and done with, so at least he could get out of the plug of this damaged Eva. "I'm _not_ a soldier. And the Harbinger are giant... giant evil monster-things which are Eva-sized. You're just trying to..."

"Yes, because of _course _the Harbingers will always have the decency of showing themselves at a scale that you can fight them properly," Ritsuko snapped. "But, oh, fine. I'm sure you'll enjoy it when you're swarmed by... oh, say, car-sized centipede things that can cut through an AT-Field."

"Oh." Shinji winced. That did actually make sense. "So I'm going to be practicing against that kind of thing?"

"... Ikari, I'm going to need a check on the vertical alignment. Please don't frown. And try not to make facial expressions," ordered the Operator, and he complied. "Okay, look up." Not making facial expressions was, in the boy's experience, harder than it seemed when one was talking with Ritsuko Akagi; nevertheless, he looked up to the red light at the top of the screen.

"No," the blond said, her voice clipped. "That will be initial training, so you will be practicing a mixture of anti-armoured-vehicle and anti-infantry tactics, in the simulator, using your mean synchronisation value for combat effectiveness and Evangelion behaviour."

"Bottom right, Ikari. Please look as soon as you see the red light."

"This is also to teach you how to use your LITAN better, Shinji," the Major added. "Nerv is meant to handle the anti-infantry systems, but it still needs guidance. Rei'll be working, independently, on sync and AT-Field control, so you will be on your own. We'll be using Migou units as the OpFor," she continued. "They don't act quite in the same way as normal vehicles, and..."

Shinji pursed his mouth. "Okay," he said, unwillingly, "... and you think that I might have to fight them." It... yes, it seemed fairer that way. The Migou were a threat, after all, and it wasn't like they were people. As long as they didn't plan to use him as a proper soldier; he _had_ read the contract he had signed, and it was clear that as a Test Pilot, he was restricted to anti-Harbinger deployments, except in cases of immediate attack.

"Yes." The black-haired woman's words confirmed his suspicions. "Unit 02 has already seen field use in emergencies on the Eastern European Front, and we can't be sure that the Migou won't try to take out the Evangelions. They've tried before."

His eyes widened. "Tried? When?"

"It doesn't matter," Dr Akagi intruded. "Suffice to say, we are not wasting your time with this." The woman coughed. "Now, if you could just hurry up and set up the Costal Urban Arctic sim, Maya, then we can get started." The blonde cut the link to the plug, tapping her fingers on the control console in front of her, with the sound of calibrations in the background.

"Nervous?" Misato asked, resting one hand on her shoulder. "The 02 test?"

Ritsuko slipped away with a shrug. "No," she said, flatly. "I trust Schauderhaft enough to know that there won't be any mundane problems with the Unit, and there's no point worrying. I can't change anything, so I should just accept it, and make the most of it."

"Bet you're biting your nails, though," the dark-haired woman said, with a faint grin.

"I am not!" Ritsuko protested, balling her hands into fists to prevent any examination of her fingers. She sighed. "Although I'm going to have to get my roots touched up," she added. "Haven't had time, and I'll need to be looking good for Saturday. It's just such a waste of time, though."

"Which bit?"

"Precisely," the scientist said to her old friend, with a sigh.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Dr Calvin Sylveste leant against the wall, the light recess preventing the breeze from stirring his immaculately coifed rust-red hair. Besides him, the man from the GIA, his blue shirt unbuttoned, lit a cigarette, and sucked in a breath. The slight wrinkling of the scientist's nose was testament enough to what he thought of Ryoji Kaji.

Nevertheless.

And it was in the mood of 'Nevertheless' that the silence, which was hostile on Sylveste's part, and inattentive on Kaji's part, continued. In fact, the red-haired man was pretty sure that the agent was wearing softcontacts and a subvocal microphone, and was doing something in a little world of his own. They needed to talk.

"Ryoji Kaji?" he asked rhetorically. "You are with the GIA?"

The ponytailed man blinked heavily, and turned around, his eyes focussing on the scientist. "Huh?" he asked. "Oh, yes. Office of Administration only; I'm with Human Resource Protection."

That was almost certainly a lie, and Dr Sylveste made a mental note to see how far he could probe this man's background to find out what he really did. "One might query why a member of the GIA is assigned to bodyguard duties, as the guardian of a teenage girl," Calvin remarked idly.

A smile and a shrug from Kaji. He knew the other man knew exactly why; he suspected that he knew that he knew, too. But that didn't make asking someone who'd just said his job was with Human Resource Protection why he was Protecting a Human Resource any less inane. "She is a high value target," he said. "Her safety is rather important, and," another shrug, "I'm primarily her guardian."

Behind the bland, smiling mask, the agent was letting none of his opinions of Dr Calvin Sylveste slip. It would be enough to say that they would not be polite.

"You _are_aware of Asuka's... infatuation," the other stated, Eyes narrow, as he raised one hand to stroke the rust-coloured stubble that decorated his jaw.

Kaji winced, and nodded. "Yes," he said. "Whatever else she is, she's a teenage girl. Emotionally _and _physically."

"And you're keeping _both_ of those facts in mind?" Sylveste asked, words slotting into place with mechanical precision. "That she is _sixteen_, and no matter how she acts around you, it is _only _teenage hormones, and so she's not being rational about it?"

The younger man was not smiling any more. "Don't take me for either an idiot or some kind of predator," Kaji said, his voice dropping. "She's half my age, someone I'm tasked with protecting," and suddenly the genial smile was back, "... and, anyway, I prefer my women curvy and experienced, rather than bony, still-awkward teenagers." He waited to see what the response to that baited statement was.

The injection of humour produced no visible shift in the scientist at first, besides a slight tightening of the muscles around the edge of his Eyes. Nevertheless, the feel of the atmosphere shifted, and after a moment's contemplation, Calvin Sylveste nodded. "Good. Just so we have it clear. She'd mentioned you repeatedly, but I hadn't seen how she acted around you until just then."

"I'd heard of you, too, from her and others," Kaji said, casually.

"Ha! Good things, I hope."

"Asuka seems to... well, look at you as a father figure," the agent said neutrally, eyes flicking across the other man's rust-red hair and complexion. And, yes, that was something he had wondered about. That wasn't who her father was recorded in her profile, and the lengths that one would need to go to, to conceal something like that, would be extreme, but... "She only has the highest regard for you," Kaji said.

The smirk on the scientist's face suggested that he had noticed the evasion. "I've known her all her life, and I'm the closest thing she's had to family since Ky... since her mother died," Calvin said, a hint of cold defensiveness creeping into his voice, despite his expression. "She lived with me when she was younger, back before my wife died, as you quite well know."

The agent nodded, smiling. "Yes." Time to change the subject. "And, of course, I'm fairly sure how much this means to her."

"Oh, yes. It means a lot to me, as well, but..." Calvin Sylveste trailed off. "Excuse me," he said, straightening up, with a somewhat predatory look in his eye. "We can talk later; there's someone else I need to talk to." Hands in pockets, with an almost insultingly nonchalant swagger, he made his way over to the _nazzada _who had just moved into sight. "Oh, Tokita," he drawled. "It's wonderful to see you on this fine morning."

Two red eyes narrowed at that. "Ah," the man said, clearly repressing a shudder of annoyance, and Sylveste's smile grew. "Dr Sylveste. How nice to see you."

"I know, I know." The auburn-haired man flashed a glance to the side, up at the sky. "Hmm... looks like it should be clear for at least the morning, wouldn't you say?"

"I suppose so."

"But of course." He inclined his head towards the woman accompanying the _nazzada_, in her early twenties and dressed in the uniform of a low ranking officer in the New Earth Government Navy. "I get ahead of myself. Tokita, please introduce us."

The _nazzada_, the head of the NEGN Project Daeva, straightened up subtly, taking a step back from Dr Sylveste, who was leaning in. "Uh... yes. Sylveste, this is Lieutenant Mana Krishima. Mana, this is Dr Calvin Sylveste, head of Ashcroft's Achtzig Group, and..."

"That's the AI one, isn't it?" the woman asked him directly, in a slightly distracted-sounding tone.

"Indeed," Sylveste said, running hand along his neatly trimmed beard. "Tokita also forgot that I have the Yi Prize for Advances in Cognitive Neuroscience, the Dyson Prize for Computer Mind-Theory, and have a history of getting on his nerves," Calvin continued, in the same cheerful, friendly voice that, if one were not to listen to the words, would sound amicable. "Well, no, I flatter myself."

"He's an egotistical, arrogant, smug..."

"... exceptionally intelligent, gifted, talented..."

"... self-righteous Ashcroft type, basically," Tokita concluded. "And... why is he even here? I was under the impression that this was meant to be the test of some new Ashcroft prototype weapon, not anything to do with the Achtzig Group... unless you've loaded one of your precious TITANs on board?" he hazarded, fishing for information.

"Heavens no," was the response. "This is a personal matter, why I'm here, to give support. And, no, it's not a TITAN on board; it's cruder than that, and nothing that the Achtzig Group has made," Sylveste said, with misleading honesty.

Tokita relaxed subtly. "I've been hearing about this 'Evangelion' prototype," he admitted. "I have to say, it's a little mean-spirited of the Foundation to schedule this on an emergency, when you damn well know that our thing is scheduled for this weekend. Of course," he snorted, "maybe you're just afraid of what our Daeva will do, eh, Mana?"

"Maybe, sir," the woman said dreamily.

The expression of Calvin Sylveste's face was studiously blank. "We will see," he said, before glancing down at his watch. "Only a few minutes to go," he said, staring out over the testing grounds.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Sirens sounded. They were not the high wail of an evacuation notice; no, they were the precautionary sounding of a prearranged alert. Yellow lights lit up within the hollow bowl-shape of the testdome, cascading along the walls, while emergency floor markings directed the way to the nearest halt-point. It was merely a safety precaution, because no-one should have been inside the testdome by now, but it was still protocol.

"Cameras are check-lit green. All rolling, and we're pseudo-live. Transmission status check?"

[Transmission status is: Operational. Functionality is green.]

"Keep an eye on it," Dr Schauderhaft ordered. "And make sure the testdome walls are responding properly to flash stimuli, then go to green."

They didn't want anything to go wrong today.

[Warning. Special Weapons Test In Progress,] proclaimed LAI systems out in the test dome and in the command centre, repeating their warning in Nazzadi. [_Rahui prekati. Nekwekutermumani xamoni nowetemagini._]

Captain Martello leaned forwards. "Well, looks like everything's in place, people," he said, cracking his knuckles. "Get Unit 02 up. Let's go and make the news."

In the entry plug of the Unit, Asuka Langley Soryu took a steady breath of LCL, the taste as nothing to her, and flexed her fingers around the control yokes. Closing her eyes, she took a second breath, and rolled her neck, and her Evangelion moved with her. Synchronisation was holding steady, and the unique qualia of piloting the synthorg were already at the forefront of her mind.

[Are you ready, Test Pilot?] asked Nerv, her Ouranos LITAN, in its harsh, synthetic voice. [Captain Martello requests confirmation that you will carry out the drills as rehearsed.]

"Yes," she said, simply. Both Kaji and Uncle Cal were watching her, as well as the eyes of the world. She would not contemplate anything less than perfection, because she would not _fail_. At all.

The four-eyed behemoth rose from the chute, clouds of chilled gas enveloping it. The titan was motionless, dead, still, arms limp, head lowered.

And then it moved.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Turn up the news," the elderly man ordered Hikary, sitting at the edge of his seat, aged hands clasped around one of his walking sticks. Beady eyes stared from under snow white brows, darting between the girl and the screen.

The _amlaty_ suppressed a sigh. You had to make exceptions for people this old, because even the heights of modern medical science couldn't keep the edge of the mind sharp when one was, as he had told her several times, 101 years old. "I can't," she explained to the individual she was helping on her Social Work Programme today. There were entire arcology domes of people like this, all humans, usually without any family and having problems caring for themselves. "Remember, Mr Britton, you have the muse locked to your voice."

The old man blinked. "Oh, right," he said, tone distracted, as he peered around, before settling his gaze back on the screen, and leaning forwards even further. Evidently, he had given up on whatever he had been looking for. "You know, I don't approve of all these mecha," he said to her, with a nod. "They aren't natural. How do they not fall through the ground, that's what I'd like to know? They don't look like they should be real. Like something from science fiction." The man snorted, and reached behind him, pulling out an old fashioned remote control which he had apparently been sitting on. "Mind you, I started thinking I was living in the future when I was twenty, and things have only got more so. Look at all the 'arcano' stuff that's all around... I can remember when it was all theoretical physics and blather. Far less theoretical, still as much blather to me. Can't trust it. I can remember when we had proper science, you know. None of this 'r-states' and 'arcano-magic' stuff that drives people mad."

Hikary noted the shake in his hands, as he looked away from the screen, to a picture propped up on the side, taken in the 2050s, before the Nazzadi invasion. A younger him and a woman about his age stood by a lake, with a woman who looked like a daughter, another man, and at knee level, what could only be a young grandchild, sulkily glowering at the camera.

"All these magical mecha... and none of them can make you happy," the old man said, voice querulous and soft.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

One foot broke the armoured ground, one subtle shift to the balance of the thrusters sent the Eva springing off, and the indomitable will of the AT-Field thrust with heat-shimmers back, to vault the simulated barricade. Eyes half-closed, barely breathing, a flick of her Eyes across the screen painted the model hostiles in red, and the salvo of micromissiles took them down. A few managed to return fire, the dumb drones acquiring the hulking shape, but their dummy shells rattled off battleship-thick hull plating and then they were eliminated.

Check for balance, adjust posture for recoil, keep low because hostiles may aim for the head.

In a half-crouch, the Babylon cradled in the Unit's hands roared, and a cloud of smoke replaced the effects of an arcanochromatic shell, 'wiping out' an entire block. Inwardly, Asuka sneered, because the plume was nowhere near authentic, but only for a second, because the traceries of artillery paths on the inner wall of her plug indicated that her opponent had located her, and had apparently decided to take no chances that she might intercept the on-target shells.

As if that would be enough.

"Counterbattery targets," she instructed her LITAN, and began a dodging weave designed to maximise the fire-time for her laser defence grids. She could feel her plug move deeper and deeper as her synch ratio increased, and, eyes hooded, she smiled.

And leapt, boosting the A-Pod thrusters in the Type-B(F) armour to max as an AT-Field punched a hammer blow in the air in front of her. Yes, she wasn't _meant_ to do it this way, but she'd had the simulations checked, and as it turned out, the shockwave of her jump sent shells tumbling. The sonic boom of this sudden _transition _pulsed through the test dome, sending drones flying, and she took her chance.

One step, two steps, spin-kick low – and the air cracked like a whip as she demolished the building – and leap. Two shots from the Babylon at the stationary defences and a missile barrage to clean out the foxholes with fire. And then there was only the burning hot whiteness of the plasmathrowers, sadly only simulated for this, and her triumph.

Test Pilot Asuka Langley Soryu opened a channel back to her commanders. "Objective completed; total destruction of assigned targets." Her Eyes flicked up to the clock. "Mission time, T-plus one minute and nine seconds. Which is four seconds better than the test run. And a new personal best. Oh, and a new Test Pilot best, but that goes without saying, because I _already _had the record for that."

And only then did she let out a slow breath of LCL. "Nerv, stand down," she ordered the Eva.

[Yes, Asuka,] the LITAN said, obeying.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Leaning against the wall, Ryoji Kaji let out a slow breath. He had seen more that his fair share of Evangelion operations – and had the increased security clearance to show for it – but it was hard to become jaded. Even if the sheer scale of the behemoth-class mecha could be adjusted to, the way they moved and the organic grace of the underlying ackersby organism still drew the eye. And that had been a more impressive than usual display.

Right on cue, his muse alerted him of an incoming call.

"That was very nicely done, Asuka," he told her by way of greeting, letting his lips creepy up as to make sure that his approval could be picked up by the throat-mike. In his experience, it was best to get that in as soon as possible, before she could start to fret that she had let someone down or failed in some way.

Kaji put the blame for that directly on Calvin Sylveste's head.

And true to form, her first words were, "Are you sure?" spoken in a concerned tone. "I mucked up one of my landings. I came in too quickly and there's a minor stress-fracture in the plating on the right leg. I can see the warning icons."

"Trust me, Asuka," Kaji said, lips barely moving. "You did fine. I didn't see anything wrong with it at all."

A pause. Then, "Really? You think I did my best?"

"Yes, really."

"Thank you so much, Kaji! Wasn't I amazing!" the girl said, smirking from within her plug. She tried to keep it out of her voice. He had believed that she'd actually mucked up on a landing, in public like this. It was so sweet of him to tell her that she was perfect, even when she'd 'admitted' to him that she hadn't been so. It was part of the reason he was so wonderful; he could see enough to see that she was just that good.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The spluttering noise coming from Tokita was like music to Calvin Sylveste's ears. He was, in fact, rather pleased that he had chosen to record all of this conversation, because this would mean that he would get to listen to it any time he liked.

"Just our little humble offering to the field of ACXB design," he said, not even trying to conceal his expression. "Nothing much, really. I'm sure that your war machine will come with an AT-Field which can take the ventral weapon of a Migou capital ship without breaking." He paused. "And I'm sure that your in-atmosphere flight capabilities put the way that this forty-metre mecha can go supersonic in atmosphere to shame." Another pause. "There's no way we can beat you, right?"

"Should be a fun challenge," Lieutenant Krishima said, a faint, almost distracted-looking smile on her lips.

Tokita shot her a disgusted glare, and seemed on the edge of saying something, but chose not to. "Very nice," he managed instead, glaring at Sylveste. "No wonder you wanted to get your prototype out before ours. But..."

"Oh no, dear boy," Calvin said, slapping his hand down on the other man's shoulder with unwelcome forwardness. "That's the Production Model. The Test Model and the Prototype have already seen active combat against Harbinger-class entities, and the Production Model itself had to be moved over from the Eastern European Front for these final tests." One finger went to his lips. "Oh," he said, with mock sympathy. "Are you still in the prototype phase? I suppose it will be a while before you iron out all the bugs."

The _nazzada_ slid away from the violation of his personal space, face darkening with anger. Rather than respond, though, he turned heel, and with a barked, "Come!" he marched off, trailed by the woman.

"See you on Saturday!" Dr Sylveste called after him, his grin reaching from ear to ear. "Good luck!"

Leaning back, the Ashcroft scientist cracked his knuckles. That had been _fun_. It wasn't often enough that he got to do things like that, and that would almost certainly leave the head of the NEG Naval Project Daeva in an appropriate mental state. Though, really, it was just a shame that Tokita just wasn't good enough.

He'd have been more of a challenge if he'd been better.

Whistling, Calvin Sylveste reached for his PCPU to check how the news organisations were responding to this revelation.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

There was a high-pitched noise coming from Kensuke Aida, as he stared at the screen. His hands were shaking, and his fumbling attempts to reach for his PCPU were in vain. The fact that he refused to take his eyes from the display was another handicap in this objective, and would soon pose a problem to any attempts of his to talk about this on the Grid.

Any chance that the other Naval Cadets would get on with their tasks was similarly remote. And their supervisors were similarly distracted.

It was, all present agreed, fair enough.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Toja felt his MP vibrate against his thigh, and ignored it. He had it on silent, its muse only vocalising in emergencies, and he was in the junior classroom, helping nine and ten year olds with their spelling.

It was probably Kensuke getting bored in the Naval Cadets, he thought, with a roll of his eyes. Honestly. Didn't he know that some people needed the marks from the Social Work Programme to bring their grades up, and couldn't just answer their MP any time?

He drew his attention back to the classroom, running a hand through his dark hair. "Uh," he said in response to the platinum-blonde girl. "I think... yes, it's an 'e' there, not an 'o'. It's... it's sort of an 'er' sound, not an 'or' one, if you sort of say it to yourself. Makes sense... uh, Christine?" he hazarded.

The little girl nodded enthusiastically. "I see," she said. "Thank you, Kany's brother."

His attention shifted to the girl sitting next to her, who had her chin propped up on one hand, staring out the window at the shrouded pillar in the centre of the city, rising up, still surrounded by the flocks of containment vehicles. "Are you stuck?" he hazarded. That was one of the things he had to do, remind students who looked like they weren't paying attention that they were meant to be working. "Want help?"

"I do not need your help," the dark-haired girl, Imi said, not looking at him. "I have finished already. And I don't need your help with the spelling. Spelling is just remembering things. It's easy." She paused. "I'm thinking," she added.

Toja nodded, and moved on to an _amlata_ who has his hand up, and who was having problems with the word 'instrument'. He liked the brighter ones, because they made his work easier. They meant that he had to do less things. And things with Imi were still... awkward, after that bit with the Harbinger. Clearly she felt the same way, if she wasn't going to look at him.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Towel around his neck, his change of non-school clothes folded on the bench next to him, Shinji Ikari stared at the mirror. Rivulets of water ran down his front and back, painting traceries on his skin. He was not cold, because the changing rooms were heated, but nonetheless he shivered.

He _really_ hated how normal showers, even with the hair wash they provided, never quite got rid of the scent of LCL. In the warmth of the men's changing room, he could still taste it with every breath he took, through his mouth and through his nose.

And sitting here, in this quiet with only the slight drip of water in the background as his companion, he had experienced an unpleasant realisation. Heavens knew, he didn't like his father. There were so many reasons. The fact that he was cold, unpleasant, manipulative... the list of personality flaws that Shinji assigned to his father could have filled a tome of ancient curses. The man was the bane of his life, someone who only ever _used_ him like a toy or a puppet, who threatened others to force him to obey, and who never seemed to show him the slightest bit of love of affection. And if Gendo had ever loved him, ever treated him as his son, he certainly did not do so now save when it suited him. Shinji wanted rid of him, the bonds of blood severed with a knife, so that they could go their separate ways. That was what he told himself.

Yet he had still been jealous when he had seen the man taking Rei Ayanami, rather than him, around for the teacher's conference.

The disappointment, the nausea-invoking heart-pounding _anger_ to see that, against his expectations, Gendo Ikari had turned up, but had not turned up for _him_, wasn't something he wanted. He wanted to be rid of the man, didn't he? He wanted nothing more to be allowed to go home to Japan, back to Yuki and Gany who valued him as more than a component in a machine, more than an unwilling child solider necessity, who actually talked to him for reasons other than they wanted something.

And yet jealousy was still there.

Shinji sighed, and slumped forwards, wrapping his arms around his bare chest. He took several deep, shuddering breaths, before letting them out explosively. Fine. Fine. Just fine. He was seventeen now, so got to be the big brave hero soldier – even if he didn't want to be, and if he wasn't stuck as an Evangelion pilot, he would have to be twenty-one – and so clearly he could stop anything that got in his way. He was strong! He was tough! He didn't care that his father seemed to want to take a creepy White girl to the teacher's conference, but not him! He was a veritable powerhouse of... power. His name was a killing word and why was he even thinking that?

He managed to keep that attitude up for all of about ten seconds, before he started to snigger at the sight of himself in the mirror, posturing like this. He wasn't a hero. He was a fairly skinny Japanese teenager staring at himself, ribs protruding against his skin, because he hadn't put on weight since his last growth spurt. He was all pale, almost washed-out under the bright-lights of the changing room, and... and just not that kind of thing. Shaking his head at his own stupidity, he sighed again.

And... hmm, he should probably put some underwear on before he thought about trousers or the t-shirt. It would be cripplingly embarrassing to forget.

So suitably attired, he made his way out of the changing rooms. And so he was rather surprised to find Misato, and quite a few of the other staff waiting for him there. With... with a cake. And paper party hats. And balloons. And... well, and everything.

"Happy birthday," the dark-haired woman said with a grin. "Heh. I bet you thought I wasn't doing anything and was just going to make you do tests."

"...not that there's anything wrong with tests," Ritsuko said, leaning against the wall and giving off an aura of forced joviality, the pink hat incongruous with her dyed hair. She caught Shinji glare. "Joking, joking," she said, raising her hands up, and gesturing the younger woman in the loose overalls of an Operator forwards with the cake. "And there isn't even anything like LCL in the icing."

"There also isn't LCL," Maya added, as she put it down on one of the seats along the hallway. "Who had the knife? I'm pretty sure I put it down over there."

"No, I'm pretty sure you had it in your pocket," Shigeru Aoba said, with a shrug. "You tucked it in."

"No," Maya said, patting herself down. "Not in the pockets."

Ritsuko sighed. "Right!" she called out. "Has anyone seen a knife?"

"Rei was practicing with the prog-knife today," Misato contributed, with a grin.

The blonde glowered. "That's not very helpful," she snapped. "Okay, people. I want a proper search for this. Maya, where do you think you left it?"

"... we were keeping it in the fridge in the office on 6V," the brown-haired woman said, with a moment's thought. "But I'm sure we took it out of there."

"We did," contributed another one of the Operators. "Remember? Because Sary started humming the music from Madness Place while pretending to kill Hukary, and that was in the lift."

"Okay, which lift was it?"

Misato sighed, and shuffled closer to Shinji as the Great Knife Hunt began. "Eh," she started, massaging the back of her neck. "It was going to go better in my plan."

Shinji let a smile creep onto his face. "At least you've never lost the Eva's prog-knife," he said, softly. "It's probably better this way around."

"That's the spirit," she said, sounding delighted. "Anyway, the prog-knife has all sorts of tracking things on it. And..." she paused. "Rits, does it need to be this knife? What'd be the nearest staff-kitchen where you could get a new one?" she called out, provoking a new flurry of debate.

There was a pause between the two of them, then; "Thank you for remembering," Shinji managed. "It means a lot."

Misato ruffled his still-wet hair. "Hey, I've missed birthdays too," she said, a lilt in her voice. "It's not fun. It's just we had to get all the teachers complaining about your grades and the training out of the way first, before we could go do something this evening, right? Better this way?"

Shinji made a noise of agreement.

"And that's the other thing I wanted to tell you now," she continued. "You're getting the weekend off, and I'm taking you on a trip over to Chicago-2." Shinji stifled a groan at that; when would people understand that he didn't like flying? Misato continued unabated, "There's a bit of formal technical stuff which is the 'real' reason we're there, but it's also a bit of a chance for a break for you. I mean, your synch ratio is back to what it was before Mot... actually slightly higher, which is really good..."

"It actually is," Ritsuko called from the other side of the room.

"... and, well," Misato shrugged, "it was your birthday. So we'll head over Friday night, get the business out of the way, and then it can just be fun stuff, right?"

The boy felt a slight urge to protest that she was treating him like a child, and that he really just wanted to do nothing and catch up on homework, but suppressed it. After all, Misato was trying to be nice, and... yes! He deserved some time off from training and away from the Evas!

"Oh, and you should take some of your friends," Ritsuko added, as she approached, knife in hand. "Aoba had it," she clarified. "I mean, don't expect to get many more weekends like this off, so you should make the best of it, right?"

The boy nodded, silently.

"We'll also be picking up the Second Child... that's Test Pilot Soryu, and her Evangelion, Unit 02, which is the Production Model, while we're there," the blonde added. "She's the most experienced Test Pilot, and has seen combat on the Eastern European Front; she's the one who was used when we went public today. Apparently she was furious that she got transferred to America just before Mot showed up. So she'll be stationed in L2, too, so we have another Evangelion here."

That did sound nice, Shinji had to admit. An experienced pilot would mean that he wouldn't have to be the main Evangelion pilot, and... maybe they wouldn't need him as much, then. Which means there wouldn't be painful sympathetic burns and tedious recovery because horrific monsters had damaged his giant robot, and the idiot who had designed the thing had decided that he should suffer because of that. A world which that happened less was one which, if perhaps not all was right, then at least considerably more was.

"She's a bright girl, and a very good pilot," Misato said, cheerfully, nudging Shinji in the ribs. "I heard she's already interested in you. I think you'll like her."

The boy blushed, but smiled nonetheless, as the cake was cut. Maybe today wasn't so bad after all.

And then he blinked, as something sunk in.

"... wait. The Evas went public?"

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The tinted coloured figures sat around the desk, the immaterial, intangible entopics blank and emotionless.

Yellow spoke.

"The initial phase is now complete."

White spoke.

"Phase II is now in progress."

Red spoke.

"D-d-deviation from extra...polated ssssschema; minimal. There, but m-m-minimal."

Purple spoke.

"Interference from hostile powers; within tolerated levels."

Green spoke.

"Conclusion. The path remains viable."

Gendo Ikari leant forwards, eyes hidden by opaque glasses. "All is going according to the scenario," he said, simply.

* * *

~'/|\'~


	17. Chapter 16: The Panhuman Functionality

**Chapter 16**

**The Panhuman Functionality / 'I have no comfort for thee; no not one;**

**EVANGELION**

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"_Chicago-2 has been the capital of the New Earth Government since its foundation. What was once a temporary set-up for the headquarters of the New United Nations, after the destruction of New York-1 in the First Arcanotech War, has become permanent. However, with the state of affairs of the modern world, we must acknowledge that this is merely tradition, and we are not bound to the Second Cold War politics which meant that the headquarters of the NUN had to be in the now-defunct United States of America. Africa and South America are the main population centres of panhumanity now, the two continents least touched by the wars which have ravaged the world. And when the somewhat tenuous state of affairs on the North American Front is taken into account, we must ask ourselves; 'How long can Chicago-2 remain the capital?' Are the resources spent and risks taken really worth it?"_

Ruby Okina  
'To the Cradle Once More'

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

A luminescent shimmer played across the gemstone-encrusted gold of the roof. The precious stones caught the light from the water below, caught it and sent it forth in all directions. Prismatic sprays sparkled against the wet walls of this underground cavern, catching the gilded coral edged in tarnished brazen green in strange lights. This place, this far-reaching cavern that had been built through uncounted ages, and whose history was written in foot-eroded rock, was a wonder of light.

All bar the centre, for the gemstones and the waters and the gold had all been positioned such that the supplicants, blinded by the radiance, could not see that which dwelt in the centre. In wondrous light, they were blind, and that was good, for their sight would despoil this sacred place.

Three of one, the chant went out. Three of one, and one of another. Patterns of war, patterns of hate, patterns of betrayal and of lust, have been painted in the sacred ways. Already the stirring has begun. Three of one and one of another.

The towering figure in the centre of this holy place gave no sign of acknowledgement.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**16th of October, 2091**

[We are beginning our final approach to Chicago-2,] the autopilot stated crisply. [Please put your seats in an upright position, rotate them to face toward the rear of the craft, return your trays to vertical, and ensure that your safety belts are fastened.]

Shinji Ikari sighed, wiping his brow as he looked up from the homework in front of him. Then, with a groan, he stretched in his seat, sweeping the A4-sized work-PCPU into the stowage compartment, and looked around the plushly appointed interior of the cargo module.

He had to admit, this was a much nicer flight than the ones he'd taken flying to London-2 months ago. When senior members of Ashcroft Groups travelled, it seemed they travelled in style. Only the screens replacing two walls with views of the outside broke the illusion that he could have been in one of the hospitality suites down in the Geocity all along. And the fact that he only felt mildly nauseous from the journey was a nice change, too.

He nudged Kensuke, beside him, in the ribs, and the other boy jolted upright. "Huh! Ow!"

"Landing," Shinji said, simply.

"Oh, cool!" The other boy twisted around, to stare out the unreal windows. "So, when're we going to be getting to see the city! You know, the Chicago-2 docks are a masterpiece! Although they're hardly anything compared to Durban-A... did you know, that entire city is basically naval grade nanofactories, or Nacala... that's an original, pre-AW1 city, if you can believe it, despite how important it is, or... well, they're amazing. They broke almost the entire lake into diamond honeycombs and then filled them in so they're like silos, except they build the ships aligned vertically and..."

Shinji felt his mind begin to ache at the completely unnecessary and extensive lecture which he was receiving, and tuned out.

"You can already see it," he heard Dr Akagi say, from the other side of the compartment. Her harcontacts were, for once, off, and she was wearing a high-necked white jumper which made her look peculiarly civilian. "That's not cloud down there. It's snow."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Ten thousand dragons' teeth, cast in steel and diamond, sprouted upwards from the frozen ground. Between them, a gossamer web of spiderweb lattice tied these spires together, delicate-looking compared to the spires of the citadel towers, but numerous and interconnected, so each was bound to many others. And then the hanging delta wing of the transport came around, swinging towards the north, to the landing pads, and the scale of Chicago-2, capital of the New Earth Government, became evident.

This was not a city like London-2, like Tokyo-3, like the ruins of Berlin-2. Those cities were squat and heavy, above-ground pyramidal arcologies more akin to artificial mountains than structures which dominated the landscape. Even the buildings separate from those heavy presences were armoured blocks, designed to provide cheaper housing in-between the fortifications. And in such places, the populace hid below the ground, in bubbleform spheres separated by armoured layers, culminating in a Geocity, kilometres down. But Chicago-2, despite the fortifications, despite the armoured layers and the bunkers and the standing cyclopean monuments of capital defence systems, was light, and airy. The inhabitants lived in natural light, away from the synthetic radiance of glowstrips. Under the sparking structures of diamond, greenery bloomed, growing upwards in nested vineyards and rainforests and outwards in building-connecting bubbles. Outside may have been a frozen wasteland, an ecology dying as the Migou slowly cooled the planet; inside it was alive, the chlorophyll green that was the colour of the NEG everywhere.

This almost delicate beauty was a sign of the city's age. It was the flagship city built post-AW1, distinct from the first crude fumbling attempts at arcologies , which had died in Nazzadi fire, and the squat, armoured landscapes of the strange aeon; towering needles of diamond and light. It would not be built now.

The delta wing was but one of the many dark birds swooping in to the north of the city, towards the wide flat expanse of the former lake and the clear firing lines around it. Circling, circling, each one the target of defence systems watching vigilant for treachery, the crafts waited for permission land, even as a fresh flurry of snow from the clouds rolling in from the north obscured vision further. The greenery and light of the city was no longer visible from the cameras around the plane, and, as they waited for a landing space, all that was left to see was the cold militarism of the northern side of Chicago-2, the hulking shapes, low against the ground and blurred by active camouflage, of defence systems.

Eventually, though, the landing call came – though Kensuke had to be forced back into his seat by some stern words from the Major – and silently the A-Pods moved to vertical alignment, the LAI pilot bringing the craft in for descent into one of the hexagonal landing bays. A digital opera between the aeroplane and the station systems ensued, choral binary synching and linking systems, and the six cargo capsules detached from the framework of the delta wing, leaving it a skeletal remnant of its laden form. LAI-controlled gantries and umbilical connectors swung into position, one connecting up to each wall, even as the lifter ascended, up into the sky above.

With the grating of gears, the hexagonal ceiling sealed, the boom of displaced air resounding through the room.

"Well, come on," Misato said, trailing her suitcase behind her as she made her way to the exit umbilical. One hand went up to adjust the way her red beret sat on her head. "We need to get moving, because they'll want a fast turnaround."

"Make sure you have everything," Ritsuko sighed, as she checked the back of the seat in front of her.

"I do, I do..."

The blonde ran her hand through her freshly re-dyed hair. "I was talking to the _children_, Misato," she said sarcastically, as the other passengers started to leave by the umbilical connector, and they followed.

"I can't believe the Foundation would do something like go to a completely different Region for a weekend! I mean... all the way to North America. This is so cool," Kensuke exclaimed, as he stepped off the gantry, bouncing up and down on his toes as he stood on the terrain of a new continent. "I haven't got to do this since my dad got moved from Brasilia-A! And this is just a weekend thing!"

Toja grinned, his eyes flicking down Misato's back. "Shinji gets all the luck, man," he affirmed, wrapping one arm around Shinji's shoulder. "So, come on, how much have you seen? You know what I mean."

Shinji shrugged away. "Stop messing around," he said, blushing faintly. "Anyway... um, you're friends with me because of my charming wit and... right, not because of anything like this?"

"Nope," Toja said, grinning.

[Remember, citizens,] stated a warm-sounding male voice over unseen speakers, [keep your personal possessions on you at all times. Bags left unattended will be treated as a security threat. Thank you for your cooperation.]

"Nope, pretty much the material benefits," Kensuke added, light-heartedly, ignoring the routine announcement.

"Because, I mean, I'm pretty sure I could have invited some other people along. Like... um, well, Hikary is nice, and I bet Taly would have wanted to go," Shinji said, trying to sound casual, "and... that is a big dog," he added, slowly, as the low-pitched growl of the monster by the ArcSec officer grew louder.

The dogs were armoured beasts, wearing the same colour armour as their handlers, their shoulders reaching the panhumans' waists. Their growls were bass reverberations that echoed in the gut, as they sniffed. The bulbous CATSEYE sensors mounted in their helmets gave them an almost un-canine appearance. One padded closer to Kensuke, and the boy paled, beads of sweat visible in the bright light. It passed, and he slumped in visible relief.

"Those things are scary," he muttered.

Shinji raised his eyebrows. "I think that's sort of the point," he said, trying to keep the slight shake out of his voice. He encountered them fairly frequently down in the Geocity, but they were still intimidating.

"Yeah, but drones are nice and clean and... a CATSEYE drone feels safe, you know. But those things... I bet they weigh as much as I do, in armour."

"One of my neighbours has a retired ArcSec dog," Toja said, looking considerably less worried than the others. "They're actually pretty nice dogs... at least, she is. Think they're chipped for control, anyway, so it's not like they'll just go for you."

Kensuke rolled his eyes. "Oh, sure, the fact they have chips in their brain means that... oooh!" Whatever her was about to say was interrupted by his rather girlish squeal, and a dash that left his face pressed against a window, staring down at a loading bay. "Look... look at that!" One hand scrambled in a pocket for his PCPU. "Is that... that is! It really is!"

"What's going on?" Shinji asked, flinching, and looking around warily.

"It's an entire bay of combat mecha," Kensuke exhaled, in tones of religious awe. "Let's see, let's see... are they ZNB-12s or ZNB-13s? Oooh, yes, yes, they're ZNB-13s! They lost the micromissile launcher of the -12, but sources widely agree that the replacement of the old-style laser cannons with the latest high end plasmathrowers more than compensates for it, making them a superior combatant by far in urban areas. Moreover..."

"Aren't you just quoting that from those websites you read?" Toja asked, drifting over.

"Besides the point. And... look!" Kensuke continued, running over into the window on the other side. "Heavy powered armour; those look like REV-9As, which are the best new and upcoming design, considerably smaller than other things in the same combat class due to radical new enhancements in their D-Engines. Of course, civilian arcanotechnology is generations behind military stuff... do you know that the engines available to the civilian market haven't been improved in almost twenty years?" With fevered eyes, the boy glanced back at Shinji. "This is so cool!" he breathed. "I didn't realise... of course, we're using a private Ashcroft landing area. And that means that I get to see military tech on the pads, ready for deployment. And..." he ran off, ahead of the group. "... so cool!"

Shinji didn't say anything, only staring in vague bemusement. He didn't feel as well as he had; there was a slight throb behind one eyeball that marked an oncoming headache, and he felt slightly sick. Inwardly, he groaned, at the symptoms of airsickness which had apparently decided to make themselves known just after he got off the plane.

[The security and well-being of citizens is our main objective. Please cooperate fully with any ArcSec or airport staff who approach you.]

"Well. He seems to be enjoying himself," Misato remarked, with a slightly flirty smile. "I guess that's his favourite bit of our little date."

Toja let out a chuckle, and massaged the back of his neck. "Yeah, Ken's always been like that," he remarked, sounding slightly embarrassed. "If... like, he could find a way to take a mecha to the prom as a date, he totally would."

Shinji groaned. "Don't call it a 'date', Misato," he muttered softly. "You'll just give them ideas."

The woman had rather sharper ears than he had hoped. "Now, now, Shinji, don't get jealous. A woman has ne..." her sentence was interrupted by Ritsuko tapping her on the head with her PCPU.

"Don't joke about that sort of thing," the scientist said severely, as they paused, waiting while an airlock cycled. "That is _completely_ inappropriate!"

"_Thank_ you," Shinji exhaled.

"Well, I'm _sorry _that none of you have a sense of fun," Misato drawled. She shrugged. "Anyway, Shinji, Toja..." she shot a glance in Kensuke's direction, "... uh, you two. Just remember you've got most of today to yourselves. I've sent you the time and place when you have to meet up... that's at Ashcroft Headquarters. We'll take your suitcases there, too, because we've got private transport there."

Toja grinned broadly. "Thanks," he said, sounding slightly relieved.

The woman gave him a sparkling grin, as the bright lights above cast her face into a pattern of light and shadow. "No problem," she remarked. "I..." and then she trailed off, as a patrol of armoured troopers, the stylised 'A' of the Ashcroft Foundation on their semi-powered armour crossed the intersection in front of them, heading towards one of the boarding areas. Only one of them was not wearing a helmet; a pale-skinned man, balding despite his youth, with thin aristocratic features.

His gaze swept over their group, as he passed, and the corners of his lips turned up slightly, before he passed out of sight, lost among the troupe.

There was a high-pitched squeak from Kensuke. "That was Eschaton XI-H semi-powered heavy combat armour! Wow! I didn't even know it was past the prototype stage! I mean, I got to see the XI-F when it came to the school... that was so cool, but..."

"Ken. Shhh." Despite the fact that he was back on solid ground, Shinji felt his head sway and gut clench from that old, familiar sensation of air sickness, and he swayed, head suddenly spinning. The lights in the room were flaring bright in the corners of his eyes, and he really hoped that he wasn't about to vomit all over the floor in public like this. That would be humiliating. He slumped slightly, leaning into Misato, who was rod-stiff. "Sorry," the boy apologised, looking up at his guardian.

The woman was tight-lipped and pale, her Eyes narrow, synthetic pupils contracted to pin-pricks. "It's fine," she said, in a distant voice.

"Are you feeling all right, Shinji?" Ritsuko asked, genuine-seeming concern in her eyes.

"I..." Shinji swallowed, tasting bile in his own mouth. "I get... uh, very airsick. I was feeling okay, but... it must have been standing up or something, because..."

Dr Akagi sighed. "Urgh, don't talk to me about that," she said, voice clipped, but with some sympathy in her eyes. "Gendo is just the same. He usually sleeps through flights if he can... do the normal anti air-sickness tablets not work for you, either?"

Shinji shook his head mutely, despite the fact that it made the world spin more. He should be feeling more annoyed at another sign that he and his father were, in fact, related, but at the moment he was simply feeling too ill for any other response.

The blonde sighed. "Toja, can you grab Mr Aida... by the ear if you have to. Let's just get through the final security gate quickly." She shook her head. "Or at least find somewhere to sit down."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Elsewhere in the city, deeper, away from the shining diamond and lush vegetation, were darker things hidden away.

[Please remove all metal objects from your person.] Even the mechanical voice of the LAI managed to sound bored. [Weapons are to be placed separately in the marked container. When that is done, please change in the security booth. Your co-operation is appreciated.]

Ryoji Kaji shrugged, as he slipped off his shoes, placing them on the scanner. The tiling was cold underfoot, he found, and he sat right down on the benches in the changing room, feeling like a fool as he scampered to avoid spending too much time in contact with the ground. He could feel the ridged bumps of integral wards engraved on the darker tiles, even through his socks, and cursed whoever hadn't heated the floor. Making his uncomfortable way over to the scanner, he checked that the safety was on and slipped the magazine out of his handgun. Keys and wallet went into the blue box, separately, but as he reached for his PCPU, he noticed that he'd missed a message.

"Wait one minute, please," the unshaven man said, raising one finger, to signal to the security guard who was watching him in person, a panhuman component to the electronic grid. "Just have to make a call." Sitting back down, he booted his harcontacts back up, and slid the jack back into the port just behind his right ear. The presence of the screen display on his harcontacts was reassuring, although the agent would never admit it to anyone. Control pad in his hand, he selected Asuka's portrait, and checked his missed message.

Kaji smiled slightly. He might as well make the call. He still had plenty of time before his appointment, and it wouldn't do to have her asking questions about what she was up to. The hum of the line was only present for mere seconds before the girl picked up; she had clearly had her PCPU close to hand.

"Hello? Kaji?" she asked, the noise of the city in the background.

"Hello, Asuka," he subvocalised, relying on his throatmike to catch it. "Sorry I missed your call; security checks, you know."

There was a snort. "Oh, I knew there had to be a good reason. You wouldn't just not answer me, would you?"

"Of course not," was his response. "Listen, I'm going to be busy in meetings for the rest of the day, so was this anything important. I should be back by eight at the very latest, so..."

"Mmm, I knew you had an early start and late finish. Poor Kaji," the girl said sympathetically. "They work you so hard. Up at all hours." There was a pause, and the crying of a child could be heard, distantly, over the connection. "I'm with Uncle Cal right now," Asuka added. "I'm going to be spending the day with him, because they actually gave me a day off, as Unit 02 is being loaded, and the team are supervising that so can't run the normal checks. I don't think I'll go soft from a single day off, do you?"

"I wouldn't dream that that would be possible," Kaji reassured her, smiling faintly. "I've seen your performance."

"Mmm." The noise was rather smug. "Anyway, he says he has something planned, and then later today we're meeting up with Major Katsuragi... she's the Director of Operations for the Project, and Dr Akagi, who's the Director of Science for the entire Group. I've met her a few times; she's been in charge for basically as long as I can remember, and... what's the matter?"

The pony-tailed man, freshly shaven, was trying to hold in laughter. "I..." he swallowed, forcing himself to be calmer, and mostly succeeding. "It's... mmm, I've heard of those two. They've a bit of a reputation."

"They certainly do," the girl said, proudly. "Dr Akagi's a genius, from the times I've met her; she put Dr Schauderhaft to shame last time on the point of the upgrade to the D-Engines, and she was barely out of university when she took over the Group. And Major Katsuragi... I've seen her combat record. For a conventional mecha pilot... she's pretty good." Asuka sniffed. "Of course, if she'd upgraded to a proper ACXB mecha she'd have been better, but, still... hopefully under their command, I'll be properly appreciated."

[Please do not delay,] the bored-sounding LAI said.

"Mmm." The man was still stifling his amusement, ignoring the LAI. "So... how are you?" he asked, clearly trying to change the topic.

"It's certainly colder this morning," Asuka remarked, annoyance in her tone. "Seriously, is it something about this city? Can't they keep their internal temperature settings constant or something? It's been getting colder every day I've been here; does winter really set on this fast, here? Well, I suppose that's to be expected, if you're going to build all these stupid spires, rather than a proper pyramidal arcology or subterrasphere. This place is obsolete. I tell you, when they move the capital to somewhere else, which is _clearly_ going to happen soon, it'd better be somewhere warmer."

Kaji listened to her rant with a hint of amusement which he purged from his voice. "Yes," he said non-committed. "Well, it's true it felt a bit colder this morning, but, then again, maybe it's just a local thing. A problem with the spire. I feel fine now."

"No, it's not. This entire _city_ is cold. I wish I was back in Ostberlin-2," Asuka said, somewhat sulkily. "London-2 had better be warmer... it's further south, so that should better for getting away from this _cold_. Stupid Migou and their carbon-locking."

Kaji nodded. "Listen," he started, "I've got to make the meeting, and..."

"Sure!" He could almost see the grin on the girl's face, even though the portrait in his harcontacts was static. "See you tonight!"

Smiling paternally, Kaji shook his head, and checked his pockets again, fishing out a half-empty packet of chewing gum.

[Please disconnect all electronic devices from cybernetic interfaces before entering the changing booth,] reminded the LAI.

The man sighed, and pulled out the jack, his eyes returning to their natural colour. Despite his nerves, he was not shaking. He was trained too well for that, and the endocrinal control helped what that did not cover. And the talk with Asuka had been a welcome distraction in its own way.

He certainly didn't need to be thinking about what he was about to do.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

[Attention. This is an Arcology Security announcement. Following the recent widespread public disorder in the Millennium District, Arcology Security is looking for the culprits. Information leading to prosecutions will be rewarded. Remember, we are here for your safety and security.]

The buzz of the high-ceilinged train station, the gateway to Chicago-2, was an omnipresent hum. Three boys, awake and fully alert thanks to the shots they'd had midway through the flight, were ready and willing to face the dangers and sample the pleasures of the capital city of the New Earth Government.

"You feelin' all right, right now?" Toja asked, concern in his red eyes.

Shinji took several deep breaths, inhaling through his nose and out through his mouth. "Yeah?" he tried, swallowing, mercifully without the taste of bile. "Yeah, I think I am. I get over it pretty quickly" Another deep breath. "Yes, yes." He shook his head, touching his brow with the back of his hand and finding it slightly clammy, but no more than a little. "Yes. I... I told you I get airsick, right?" He forced a grin. "At least I'm feeling better than when Misato drives."

"She drives?" Kensuke asked, enthusiastically. "What model of car? What's it like?"

Shinji shook his head. "Can't remember. The model, that is. It's aerocapable, and... look, the inside sort of looks military. Crash seats and lots of switches and things, you know?"

"Hmm." The other boy stroked his jaw. "Not sure I recognise the model... of course, you're not exactly giving it all the attention it deserves, because it sound wonderful. You said military... a modified police-level car, perhaps. Or maybe..."

"I wasn't paying attention to that," Shinji admitted. "Sorry. But... you know the stuff that fighter planes do... you know, like in films? Well, of course you do," he remarked, looking at Kensuke's avid face. "Yeah. Like that."

"Really?" The boy's eyes were wide. "Oh, wow!"

"I don't think this is... hey, watch where you're going," Toja snapped at a gaggle of younger girls who pushed past them. "

Shinji pulled a face. "I don't think you had to shout like that," he chided.

[_Sa-di iteruesdutabi absul homisapi estel hi suluscipi delo kiviliti pla kontrunosesi serabi Newi Earthi Governmenti,_] proclaimed a propaganda broadcast in Nazzadi, a noise in the background.

The _nazzada _blinked. "I'm an older brother. Yes, you do have to shout," he said, flatly. "And, yeah, I don't think that really matters. I mean, if Miss Katsuragi were to dignify us with a ride in her car, letting us climb in and going for a spin..."

"If you say 'if you know what I mean', it will go very badly for you," Shinji warned his friend.

"Wouldn't think of it," Toja lied. "But, yeah. The blonde one said she sent you a map and a guidebook, didn't she, yeah?" Shinji nodded, and fumbled for his PCPU. "Well, we got... uh, six or so hours before we have to think about meetin' up back at Ashcroft HQ. What do you want to do?"

The dark-haired boy paused, and coughed. "Um..."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

With a grunt, Ritsuko dumped the last suitcase in the boot of the aerocar, and wiped her brow on her jumper. "That's all of them?" she asked.

Misato nodded.

"Well." The blonde slammed the boot shut, only for it to bounce off the obstructions. "Oh, what now!" she exclaimed. "Did... did that sound like something breaking to you? Oh well." Ritsuko shrugged. "It wasn't my suitcase on top. Or yours," she hastened to add. "Let me just..." she poked at the suitcases, nudging them down so that they were no-longer stopping the boot from closing, "... done."

"Hah."

"So... heading to Ashcroft Headquarters first?" she asked, rhetorically. "Of course we are. Unless we want to go..." Ritsuko tilted her head. "You're rather quiet," she remarked.

Misato blinked, and shook her head. "Just a bit... distracted," she said, eyes flicking from side to side.

The scientist shrugged. "Oh, Shinji'll be fine," she said, heartlessly. "I meant it when I said that Representative Ikari is the same. They spend all the time on any plane feeling sorry for themselves, and they're fine not long after hitting the ground. Although you _could _have helped more with the bags. One of us is milspec enhanced, and it's not me."

The dark-haired woman made an apologetic sound. "Uh... sorry. I was..."

"... yes, a bit distracted, you said. Come on. I need to get to a proper Desk soon; I can't handle most of the work I need to do without a proper secure connection."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"I can't believe you didn't actually have a plan," Toja remarked, in a disappointed tone. The dark-skinned boy folded his arms, and leant forwards on the rail, the blue radiance of the sign on the opposite wall washing across his face.

"It's not like I get time off normally," Shinji protested. "And Misato sprung this on me on Wednesday... me, I thought I was just going to get some time to do nothing."

"Yeah, but..." Toja blew out air. "Think quick," he said, gazing out over the sight of the shipyards. "Or else Kensuke'll just keep draggin' us on more things like this."

Hugging himself, Shinji rubbed his forearms, and regretted not brining a jumper with him. It was chillier here in Chicago-2 than he was used it. It might have been psychological, he had to admit; the sight of the frozen, snow-covered land around the shining urban spires, rather than the reassuring safe enclosure of a proper arcology dome, _felt_ cold to him. But, psychological or not, the hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end, and they couldn't even get below ground, because him and Toja had, through lack of other ideas, agreed to let Kensuke have what they had unofficially dubbed 'happy-fun military time'.

"I'll get looking on the guidebook," Shinji agreed, hastily.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

[We are now approaching our final destination, the Chicago-2 headquarters of the Ashcroft Foundation,] the LAI pilot-system of the aerocar announced, as the driverless craft followed its assigned path, broadcasting the correct codes to not be atomised by the large numbers of defence systems trained on it. At the moment, it was rising vertically towards its destination, one of the recessed landing bays built into the connecting strands between the two towers. [Built in 2067 by the famous architect Mohammed...]

"Skip the tour guide," Ritsuko sighed. "We've seen it before and it's not that impressive... Misato, stop staring."

The dark-haired woman pouted slightly. "It's still pretty," she muttered. "Look," she added, pointing at the twin helical towers that twined around each other, the chemical basis of life on earth hewn in architectural form. "You have to admit that's nicer looking than the pyramid Representative Ikari spends his time in. And what about the fact that you've got a view from here, looking over the city, rather than the L2 way of putting everyone in domes? Doesn't... you know, sunlight and stuff mean anything to you?"

"I prefer the Geocity and Central Dogma," Ritsuko retorted. "That's impractical and clearly designed for PR. I worked there for a year, and it's a nightmare. I was so glad when they moved the department I was with underground, into the places where we can actually get some work done without having to deal with a place made for aesthetics rather than practical design considerations."

There was a silence, then Misato smiled, cheering up noticeably. "Oh yes," she said, a lilt in her voice, "I'd forgotten you were agro... agora... scared of open spaces."

"I am not agoraphobic, I just..." she paused, as her harcontacts chimed, and she bought them online. "Wait a moment, a call from Lieutenant Ibuki, back in L2? And it's set to high priority?"

The Major nodded. "Take it," she said.

Ritsuko raised one finger to her ear, and answered it. "What is it, Maya?" she asked.

"Just to tell you... um," the younger woman cleared her throat over the link, "your cats are fine and they're not ill and they certainly haven't been sick all over the floor in the kitchen and even if they had, I've cleaned it up."

Ristuko blinked. "Well... okay," she managed. "Look, I really appreciate it, and..."

"Oh, it was no problem at all, Dr Akagi... I like cats... think nothing of it really... it was no problem!" She drew a breath. "Look I have to go but just to tell you that everything's fine! Bye!"

The connection was cut, and the blonde blinked a few times, tilting her head slightly. Eventually, she shrugged. "Where was I?" she asked Misato. "Oh yes. Not agoraphobic. It's just a mild anxiety condition aggravated by crowds. Completely different thing. And..." the aerocar shifted under the two women as it touched down, the hum of the engine fading. With a click, the doors unlocked, porters already scrambling to help them unload the unmanned vehicle. "Hmm. So you want to stay in here and enjoy the warmth a little more?" the blonde asked wryly, tilting her head.

Misato snorted. "Wimp," she said, amusement in her voice, before she opened the door wide, letting the freezing air in. "Come on," she said, after clambering out, offering her hand to her friend. "The sooner you get moving, the sooner you can get back into the buildings. Even if you think they're annoying, at least they're warm... actually, they're really warm. And look at it from up here!" Facing south, Misato spread her arms wide, staring down at the shining city below and around, gleaming diamond interspersed with chlorophyll green. "Come on, you have to admit that this is really beautiful!"

"Cold-not-feeling monster," Ritsuko muttered, hugging herself, hands tucked under her armpits and breath steaming. "Come on, let's get back into the nice warm buildings."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Shinji sighed, leaning back against the wall. This area was high-ceilinged and open, white-painted and almost slightly incomplete-looking, with the diamond-glass facing of one wall giving the illusion of exposure to the outside. This was unusual enough for him; both Tokyo-3 and London-2 were to a large degree sphere-clusters, snug and safe underground, rather than these expansive sealed buildings reaching upwards. Darker clouds were moving in, obscuring the blue sky, and he had heard people mention that it looked like more snow. Rubbing his hands together to warm them from the chill which also seemed to be present in this spire, he leaned back a little more, neck hunched into the warmer jumper he'd just bought to stave off the cold

His stomach made a grumbling noise, and he looked back down, fishing in a pocket for his PCPU. "List recommended restaurants," he told the Augmented Reality Interface.

[Preferred type of food?] the muse asked.

The boy tilted his head. He didn't feel too hungry, he thought, as he watched a pair of local ArcSec officers patrolling, their dark blue and white uniforms trim, and their faceplates clear. He should probably ask the others what they wanted.

Honestly, why had Misato got him to come with her, anyway? Unit 01 was not repaired yet, so he couldn't use it. She and Dr Akagi were here for a conference, and had apparently taken him along for... well, he couldn't really see a reason. But now, instead of him getting the time off, he was instead having to put up with an _obligation_ to have a good time, and Shinji was feeling a little resentful about that. Given a choice, he really would much rather have stayed back in London-2. He could have had time off, could have sat around doing not much, could maybe have found out about some places which the locals really knew about... oh, _and_ he could have gone to a party that a rather attractive girl had invited him to.

"Just pick the places with the best ratings," he told ARI, sticking his left hand into his pocket. Yes, it wasn't even as if one city were much different from another. London-2 and Tokyo-3 could have almost been nanofac replicas of each other, and even if Chicago-2 was sort of pretty, with the plant-filled diamond towers, what was he meant to do? Go around the museums like some kind of gawping tourist? Go shopping, which was utterly meaningless when the economic homogenisation of the world meant that it wasn't even as if he could get anything cheaper here? He'd had a long flight, felt ill because of it, was only not jetlagged because of pharmaceutical compounds in his blood, and... for what?

Maybe it was just a thing about the older generations, an obsession with travel and going to other places. But as it was, he felt a bit guilty to realise that he was feeling sort of bored here, Shinji thought morosely, staring at the glowing screens in front of him, which stretched from wall to wall in the concourse. The civil authorities were busy 'naming and shaming' individuals prosecuted in riots in a district here in Chicago-2, Nazzadi face after Nazzadi face flashing up. Assault, assault, breaking and entering, arson... Shinji sighed, and turned away. Scanning the area, he noticed Toja heading in his direction, a bag in each hand, and waved.

"Heya," the other boy said, when they had made their way over to each other. "Got it all done." Shinji made a non-committal noise, which Toja clearly took as some noise of disapproval, because he stiffened slightly. "Hey, listen, my little sister went to my dad and told him that I should be nice and buy these things for her... and I'm pretty sure I'm being used as a mule or something for her friends, too. Stupid region specific releases. So..." he added, his face darkening with embarrassment, "... if you want to make a thing about why I'm carrying around all these things for ten year old girls, that's the reason, okay! It's not my choice!"

"I didn't say anything," Shinji protested, turning back around to stare over, out of the window to the sparkling city outside. "Look... oh, there's free seats down there, you want to sit down?"

Heading down, Toja claimed three seats, sinking down with a sigh of relief, while Shinji darted into the nearby Boomer's Coffee for drinks. "It was a white spiced coffee you wanted? No sugar?"

"Yeah, exactly that. Glad you got it right." The darker-skinned boy took a long slurp. "What'd you get yourself?" he asked, with only mild curiosity in his voice.

"Green tea," Shinji replied, taking a sip, and screwing up his face. "Urgh... this is way too sweet. Who sweetens green tea?" He sighed, and took another sip. "Urgh."

"Take it back and complain, then," Toja replied, his attention shifting. "Hey, what do you think that building is, over there... the one surrounded by all those biodomes?" he asked, pointing at a particular spire which rose, alone, from low-rise greenery.

"I don't know... probably government or megacorp owned," Shinji said, with a shrug. "Someone rich. And... no. It'd be too much trouble to take it back. It's not _that_ bad... it's just not very good."

Toja shot him a glance. "Seriously, what's that meant to be?" he asked. "Too much trouble. The place is right there!"

Shinji slumped slightly, flapping a hand in non-answer. Hunched over, he drank his overly-sweet green tea, lost in thought. The drink was at least helping against the cold, although the hairs on the back of his neck were still standing on end. He braced himself, and took as large a sip as he could and swallowed, for the warmth rather than the taste.

"You really don't take charge or stuff, do you?" Toja interrupted, tilting his head. "I mean, I though..." he looked around, clearly considering his words, "... I guess I thought you..." he sighed. "Never mind."

Shinji shifted slightly, moving his weight from one leg to the other. "You thought wrongly," he said quietly. "Seriously, I'd much rather have been at home this weekend, getting homework done, and... just getting to do nothing, okay? I mean, I do the cooking and stuff around the house anyway, and...if Misato wasn't there, I'd get a chance to actually start winning on the cleaning front."

"Man." The dark-skinned boy shook his head. "Listen to yourself. 'I want to clean on my weekend off'. That's just not _right_."

Shinji glared at him; a glare which would have been considerably more effective had he not been trying to keep a straight face. "... okay, that is a bit wrong," he conceded. "But the catching up on work, and the getting to do nothing parts were the important parts. That was just... a side," he added, weakly.

Toja slapped him on the shoulders. "Then clearly what me an' Kensuke have got to do is make this as much fun for you, 'cause, really, you clearly can't have fun on your own!"

With a raise of his eyebrows, Shinji sighed. "I can have fun," he said, with a note in his voice which showed that he already suspected that he was going to lose this argument. "And it's fine to just be getting time off, to do things with friends. You two don't need to treat me specially."

"Hey, I just spent fifteen minutes queuing for girl's stuff at a corp nanofac, and I'm sure I'm gonna be gettin' ads for that sort of stuff for the next month," Toja proclaimed. "See the sacrifices I can make for friends and family. Come on! Let's go find Kensuke, and we'll find something actually fun to do, before he can go drag us off to a military history museum or something."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The clacking of fingers was a beat to the hum of the fan overhead.

'I've been in contact with Mal from the 02 team, and he's confirmed that the Eva's fully operational. It's fitted with the Type B-1F for transport, in case of an attack and forced deployment, but the components to restore it to the default Type-B are also in transit, and 02's science guy tells me that they've got switch-over down to three days. So don't move onto 00 yet; make sure that 01 is completely done, and don't rush it. I want two Evas operational if at all possible from now on. If Rits gives you trouble about that, tell her to take it to me; this is directly an Operations matter.'

With a shake of her head, the Major flicked her Eyes across the virtual message. "Fill in the rest and check it," she ordered her muse, the LAI complying, correcting spelling, polishing the language, and occasionally prompting her for clarification of points. With one last read-through, the dark-haired woman sent it into the queue to be transmitted to L2 with the next squirt.

Yawning, Misato stretched out, pushing her chair away from the Desk. Hands behind her head, she flexed her fingers. The sensitivity settings on this Desk didn't feel quite right, even though she'd imported the settings across, and it was the same model as the Desk back in her office. How annoying.

Still, unless someone had been stupid enough to send important mail by low priority datasquirt, she'd dealt with everything she needed to. An idle thought, and she checked the status update from the Armacham security forces trailing Shinji and his friends; she smiled as her muse grabbed the nearby security cameras. He seemed to be enjoying himself, which was good. She wished, as Misato, that she didn't have to force him to train so much, but as Major Katsuragi, she was quite aware of the necessities of his position as the Third Child.

Crossing her legs on the chair, she idly spun around a few times. Yes, she'd covered everything... hmm, should she talk to Captain Martello from the Unit 02 team in person? There were a few things she thought she probably needed to bring up, but there was no need to do it face to face, really, and they were moving the Evangelion over. She would have plenty of chances to talk to him then. Yes, no need to book an extra meeting while she was in Chicago-2 before the scheduled one just prior to loading Unit 02 up.

"Stop that. Please," Ritsuko said, acidly.

Misato tilted her head, slowing her spin to stare at the blonde. "Stop what?"

"Spinning like that. I can see you moving in my periphery, and it's ruining my focus."

"Oh." Misato shrugged. "Um... don't look at me, then?"

The scientist smiled acidly. "If they're going to have us share a temporary office, then, please, can you not be so distracting? Go... go get changed for the Daeva meeting, if you've finished everything. Just leave me to work in peace, because I have a lot of things I need to cover, and you're not helping. One bit."

Misato sighed. "Come on..."

"No, don't 'come on' me. I was working fine before..." Ritsuko blanched. "Oh. Did I just say that?"

The dark-haired woman's giggling seemed to suggest that, yes, she had in fact just said that.

"You're so immature," Ritsuko sighed. "Go get changed, and leave me to work, okay?"

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Whether by nature or nurture, Shinji Ikari had never been the most sociable of people. That was not to say that he had made a habit of staying in his room, glued to the Grid – quite unlike Kensuke, to name one individual currently in close proximity to him – but even back in Tokyo-3, he had been quite happy to be left alone sometimes. And , he was finding, the broad open lines of sight, and the sheer elevation of the spires that made up Chicago-2 were slightly disconcerting. Every few levels in the buildings, there were broad open concourses, one diamond wall seemingly open to the outside, lined with the shops and the communal activities of the people here. The bridges and connecting lines between spires, which had looked like silvery cobwebs from the air, were revealed to be multi-story bridges, connecting two of these spaces together.

The people of Chicago-2, or at least the ones who lived in the spires, played and relaxed in these threads, suspended above nothingness. To the subterrasphere-raised Shinji, that just seemed unnatural. Especially the bits where the floors were transparent.

"Come on, you can't be afraid of heights," was Kensuke's response, as he pointed this out, the three of them strolling along, heading in the general direction of the Ashcroft Headquarters where they were meant to meet back up with Misato. "I mean, seriously?" He paused for a moment, adjusting his arglasses. "Urgh, pop-up AR adverts on the walls and floor. Stupid sponsored guide service."

"Hey, if you don't want to get arverts, don't accept that sort of thing," Toja said, heartlessly. He patted his breast pocket. "Only wear them when you need them."

"No way." They continued along. "And, Shinji? That jumper makes you look like a tourist. Those topos on it are just tacky," he said, referring to the topological animated graphics on the smart fabric.

Shinji stuck his hands deeper into his pockets. "I didn't buy it for the topos," he informed Kensuke. "It's cold."

Tilting his head slightly, the other boy frowned. "No, not really. I'm fine in just a t-shirt."

"Must be a sign of how manly you are," Toja drawled. "And I'd like to point out that Shinji is totally right. Walking on those transparent bits is just a bit..." his mouth pursed, "... eugh."

"Wait a minute, you're just in a..."

"Yeah, why'd they have to go and do that," Shinji interrupted, to get the topic off the subject of whether he was apparently a wimp for feeling the cold.

Kensuke sighed. "Oh, you closed-in, naive underground dwelling people things... troglodytes, that's the word! So used to living in subterraspheres and closed in arcologies that you're scared of the natural world."

Toja looked at him flatly. "It's hundreds of metres down."

"So? I lived here for a few years when my dad was assigned here, and I wasn't scared of it, even when I was... like, seven or something."

"And you? Accusing _anyone _of being scared of the natural world? You're scared of dogs! And cats!"

"They're scary!"

Shinji coughed. "Uh... wasn't that where we were going to go next?" he asked, trying to break up the pointless bickering. "I mean, that looks like an arcade place."

Toja scanned the name. "Yep," he said, grinning. "We've got some time to kill, right? I checked some rec sites and this is meant to be a pretty good one... and it was close." He frowned slightly. "And had toilets. Look, I'll find you when I'm done."

Shinji and Kensuke were left to wander further into the arcade, coming to a stop by a vacant machine which proclaimed itself to be called 'Xtra Musik Rock'. The bespectacled boy smiled, stepping forwards, and immediately searched for a track. "Want to play?" he said, not waiting for an answer as he swiped for two player.

"Well... I play the cello, but I've never been a big fan of this type of game," Shinji admitted.

"Well, in that case I challenge you to a rock off!" Kensuke declared loudly, puffing out his chest. "Which makes it a matter of honour!"

Shinji shrugged. "Sure," he said, getting into position. And then was soundly trounced.

"We could try again?" he suggested. "Maybe on one not-so-fast paced?"

Defeat was his inevitable fate.

"One last go?"

No such luck.

Discarding the plastic controller, Shinji threw his hands up in the air. "Okay, I admit it," he said. "You're better at me at pressing buttons on a controller, which bears no resemblance at all to playing an actual instrument, as anyone who's played one ever would know."

Kensuke slapped him on the back, and smirked. "Easy, easy," he said. "Someone'd think you're getting upset about being totally slaughtered three times in a row."

"I'm not upset!" Shinji insisted. "It's just not at all like a real instrument, and I think everyone needs to know that." He blinked. "And where's Toja? Shouldn't he... you know, be out of the toilet by now?"

The other boy snorted. "Well, he'll find us," Kensuke remarked, as they resumed their stroll around the arcade, looking at what was there. The electronic facsimile of gunfire and loud music was an aural counterpart to the lights there; chaotic and bright. The game machines with Nazzadi players were particularly bad, Shinji felt, shivering, because the reduced colour sensitivity of the Nazzadi eye just meant that the primary colours were cranked way up, making the play of light in the peripheral vision almost painful. And with the noise, he was having to strain when his friend talked to him.

"Anyway, did you see the full Evangelion public announcement they put up yesterday?" Kensuke asked, looking highly enthusiastic. "It's way better – and longer, which is better – than the Wednesday one! And it means that people can now talk about how the proto-Engel – which everyone claimed was just a test-bed for experimental technologies, not a real weapon – well, it turned out to be real! Makes you wonder what other superweapons they're hiding from us!"

Shinji shot his friend a warning glare, and, when that was ignored, coughed. "Not interested," he managed, the security warnings he'd had from various people flashing through his mind. "And... they probably have a good reason for covering things up," he added, rather more weakly. The boy was aware that, yes, 'people would object if they knew we were using a teenager as a pilot' was _technically_ a good reason to not let the public know, but from his admittedly somewhat-self-interested point of view, he found it rather objectionable.

Kensuke managed to look offended by that. "It's awesome!" he insisted. "Like... that's what people have been talking about online and IRL, ever since. And..." his brain caught up with his mouth. "I guess it is your we...ekend off, and I've been talking about it a lot, so..." he trailed off, as the careful choice of words ran short.

There was a faint twinge of guilt on Shinji's part. "I'm sorry," he muttered, "but... yeah, just please don't talk about that sort of stuff here. Why not..." he paused, as he thought through what he knew of Kensuke's other interests, beyond military hardware, and turned up mostly blanks. "How about some food?" he ventured.

"Sounds good, yeah," Kensuke said. "Maybe... oooh!" he exclaimed, snapping his fingers. "That reminds me! I sort of remembered a sort of secondary birthday present for you. Ish."

Shinji paused, distracted from his glance around the concourse. "Uh... thank you." His eyes flicked over Kensuke, noting the conspicuous lack of wrapped gifts, and the smirk on the other boy's face. "What is it?"

The arglassed boy's lipped twitched. "Oh, just the answers to all the maths homeworks I've done so far."

Blue eyes closed then opened again in surprise. "Thanks!" Shinji replied, with considerably more enthusiasm than before. "That's... actually really helpful."

"Toja's right," Kensuke said, more seriously. "You don't seem to relax. And on the way here, you were doing homework, rather than... watching a film, or anything. So... I sort of figured I'd help out." He slipped a hand into his pocket, bringing out a datastick. "I've anonymised this, but you still shouldn't load it up while your PCPU's Gridsynched, or it'll get flagged. Set up a read-only offline display mode on one device, and copy them in by hand to the homework. Best way."

Shinji nodded, smiling broadly, and thanked his friend again, feeling considerably more cheerful. That was his workload reduced by quite a bit. It didn't solve the problem of the essay-based subjects – and that was a point, as he would need to check through the answers to make sure that he both understood them, and that it wouldn't be obvious that he was copying Kensuke... how good was the other boy at maths, actually – but, still, it would be much better than the alternative. "What now?" he asked.

"Hmm." Folding his arms, Kensuke glanced around the room. "Aha!" A large screen, displaying images of gunplay-based violence drew the boy like a moth, and he flittered around it, staring at the performance of the person wearing an AR-helmet, a replica rifle in hand, who was fighting cultist. "Oh, they're pretty bad," he remarked, loudly. "Look at it, low on health, and barely out of the first level. Ha! Just wait until they come across the boss."

In actual fact, the boy playing the game didn't actually make it as far as any boss there may or may not have been. A contributing factor to his demise may have been the loud commentary from behind him, despite the padded helmet he was wearing. And the dirty look he shot Kensuke as he stalked off may have confirmed such suspicions. Nevertheless, like a bespectacled thunderbolt, Kensuke was remarkably fast at darting in to grab the helmet and rifle involved in the game, before he paused.

"You should have a go, Shinji," he said, offering them to his friend. "Come on. It's fun."

"Fine," Shinji sighed, picking up the dummy rifle, and taking the arhelmet from Kensuke, sliding it onto his head. "But you're paying for it, okay? And it's not a game. Um... I mean, sorry, it _is_ a game, it's _not_ anything else. Right?"

Kensuke grinned, taking advantage of the fact that Shinji could no longer see his expression. "Oh, sure," he said. "I just want to see how good you actually are at this. I mean, this is basically the same as... just another game."

Shinji sighed, and then sighted down the rifle, moving it around his augmented-reality-generated field of view. The leering faces of cultists stared back at him, while an introductory spiel explained whatever contrived plot meant that the character was storming a museum to rescue the President from cultists. Or something. Shinji would have quite willingly confessed, if anyone had asked him, that he wasn't really paying any attention to the plot. With a slightly thoughtful twist to his face, he noted how it felt quite a bit heavier in his arms than the rifle felt normally – when he was the... when he was _in_ the Evangelion – and practiced moving his aim across the screen. Squeezing the trigger, he felt the thing kick against his shoulder, an electromagnet within the device emulating the recoil of a real weapon. It _felt_... the best phrase he could think of was probably 'low synch', like he was wearing thick gloves which damped the feeling he should have been having.

To distract himself from this unpleasant sensation in his own body, Shinji Ikari selected the Start icon, and entered a world of espionage and violence.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Angels sang and demons whispered in the ears of Ryoji Kaji, as the muffled echoes of his padded footsteps reached him through the biohazard suit he was wearing. Lights flashed in the corners of his eyes, and that little sense in the back of his head, that screamed that something was _wrong _was hoarse from overuse. He followed the instructions he had, and kept his eyes dead ahead, to the night-black door at the end of the corridor, letting his implants keep him from panicking or flinching. This was not a place for human fear or mortal instincts.

A soft pad of footsteps, the synaesthesia of moisture on his hands. A sudden pressure on his knees, as if there was a current flowing against them. He endured.

The ABN Facility was a Grade-A facility. It was designed to hold things of such a level that their mere presence induced Aeon War Syndrome; ancient horrors spoken of in myth, entities which drove monsters mad, things which would not die, would not sleep and should not exist. Those true horrors of the universe which mankind had encountered - or, in its worst moments, made - were sealed here, undying and restless. Was it any surprise that the Auburn district, located just outside Chicago-2 proper, in one of the , was viewed as a hell-hole slum by the NEG as a whole, a place where cultists gathered, and extra-dimensional beasts were attracted, before the near-absolute military lockdown around the place terminated them? Where the AWS score of the inhabitants was a good two to three points higher than average for the population? Where children were sometimes born with Outsider taint through no fault of their parents, and the parapsychic rate was nine times that of the ambient population?

Of course, a cynic could say that characteristic made it useful, made it worth keeping so close to a population centre.

Sussurations and reverberations, echoing from afar in this narrow corridor. Something was watching him, he _knew_, and all the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, cold shivers running down his spine.

But now he was up to the door, crafted of something that was, and was not, black stone. Licking his lips, he read out the code displayed against the inside of the faceplate of the suit, and waited for the humming drones to buzz around him, their umbilical cables trailing down from the ceiling.

The door unsealed, and within was blinding light, and dark un-stone. Sudden nausea hit Kaji, only to be suppressed, and he took a step forwards. Surprisingly, the buzzing in his ears got quieter, as he stepped along the gantry that connected the entry point to the _thing_ at the centre of this hallway of dark stone. The door sealed behind him... and the noise stopped.

And the sixth sense at the back of his mind stopped screaming.

"Huh," said Ryoji Kaji, bewilderment in his voice. He took another step forwards. And a terrible suspicion began to dawn.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Shinji Ikari put the rifle down in the rack, and stretched, slipping off the arhelmet. "Happy now?" he said, to Kensuke, rolling his eyes. "I did the first mission, and only died once."

"Oh yes," the arglassed boy exhaled.

Toja grinned broadly. "Pretty nice shooting," he remarked.

Shinji blushed. "I sort of have to practice," he said, modestly, before adding, "... of course, things are sort of different, so it doesn't count for much, really. When did you get here?"

"While you were busy," the dark-skinned boy replied.

Leaning forwards on his tiptoes, Kensuke almost reached out for the headset, fingers twitching. "Okay, that sort of modesty? Stop it. That... had you even played that before?"

"This game?" Shinji asked with a shrug. "No. I've done some similar... ones, but not this one."

"That's real good," a dark-haired stranger said, grinning. "I mean, learning the spawn patterns is one of the big thingies 'bout how to do well."

"Yeah, pick up and play... pretty good," said a _nazzady_, to sounds of agreement from an _amlata _beside her who was probably her boyfriend.

"Mmm," Kensuke continued. "It's even better, 'cause, you know, right... I've spent ages trying to get my score up on it and I have the Imago IV copy of the game and it's an approved training sim for the NEGN so they've got a machine with the cadets and..."

"Oh, come on," a clear female voice came from behind them, a patronising note in her slightly-accented tone. "It wasn't _that_ good. He didn't even make the leaderboard."

With a slight groan from mildly aching arms, Shinji turned around in the poorly lit arcade, to face the source of the noise. A red-blonde girl, hair pinned back with red clips, was standing, hands on hips, brows raised. The look in her narrowed blue eyes was one of superiority, and, from his perspective, arrogance. "I'm not pretending to be _that _good," he said mildly, suppressing his own exasperation.

"Yes. And a lot of people could see that," was the response. The girl crossed her arms, her baggy jumper quite out of line with the sundress it seemed to cover.

He raised his hands in partial surrender. "Whatever you say," he said. Turning away from her, he quite deliberately focussed all his attention on Kensuke. "Hmm," he remarked. "That wasn't that bad, but... it sort of felt a bit sluggish."

"I never found that," Kensuke said. "Actually, I had had a problem that it's a bit twitchy."

Toja grinned. "That's because you're not good at games, Kensuke. Seriously. I beat you all the time. You want to think that you are, but you're... kinda really not." The red-eyed boy shot a glare at the girl. "And ignore her, Shinji. You did great, mate. Hey, you wanna go play co-op on..."

"Great?" was the intruded response from the girl. The middle-aged man behind her, who, with his rust-coloured hair, looked to be related to her, smiled faintly; something she didn't see. "That wasn't a performance deserving of the word 'great', no matter what crowd-think claims."

Toja turned to face her fully, puffing up his chest, to make best advantage of the slight superiority in height he had over her. "Well, I'd say my friend did pretty well, so..."

"Are you going to stand there being an idiot patting yourselves on the back, or are you actually going to play another game? Maybe the next level?" the girl retorted. "Because if you aren't..."

"You think you could do better?" the _nazzada _snapped. "Because if you want to try, you're free to!"

"Oh?" She put one long finger to the edge of her mouth, head tilted in saccharine curiosity, before the mask fell off, and she returned to glaring. "Why, yes. Yes, I do think I can do better. Stand aside, idiot." She squared her jaw. "I _hate_ it when people get undeserved praise."

"I don't see why it's really any of your business," Shinji muttered sullenly, more annoyed by her attitude than by her words, because... it hadn't been that good, had it? He'd died once. That would normally have earned him a talk from Dr Akagi or Misato, especially since the way it had happened had been because he'd missed someone on the right.

"It wasn't undeserved!" Kensuke interjected. "Shinji did really good!" he added, to agreement from Toja.

The man accompanying the girl smiled even wider, leaning back slightly against the edge of one of the machines, to watch the spectacle before him.

Stepping forwards, the girl snatched the arhelmet from Shinji's hands, taking the rifle when offered. "Do you want to watch someone doing it properly, or maybe you'd prefer to go off and annoy someone else?" the eyeless visage of the helmeted figure asked.

"Oh, we'll watch," Toja snapped. "We will watch!"

" We will?" Shinji echoed. "Can't we just go off and leave the rude girl to her own stuff, and, you know, actually go and do something fun?"

The other boy smiled a predatory smile. "Oh, I think it'll be quite fun to watch her fail and burn and stuff, because she made one silly mistake. Yes. This will be fun indeed."

The girl sniffed. "I don't _make_ silly mistakes," she said, as she selected 'Start'.

The next seven minutes produced a steady fall in Kensuke and Toja's faces as they watched her performance on the large screen, the attraction of a flock of onlookers, and, on Shinji's part, boredom. Wandering off to buy a drink helped remedy the last part, and by the time he got back, the inhuman curves of a Dagonite power armour filled the screen, in front of the sea of onlookers.

The abrasive girl under the helmet didn't appear to have lost any lives. And the way she was moving... Shinji frowned. The posture, the way she snapped from position to position, the particular way she held the toy rifle...

... well, she clearly played this game far too much. The blossom of flame from the right arm of the hostile indicated the endgame, as she pressed the advantage with practiced skill, hammering it in the weaken flank with the 'Heavy Rifle' she'd apparently acquired. The death throes of the boss demolished the facade of the mansion, and the girl tore the helmet off, looking both fairly attractive, and incredibly smug. With a smirk on her face, she entered 'ALS' on the leaderboard, and presented the sullen-looking Kensuke with the equipment.

"Now I'd say that was a _good_ playthrough," she remarked. "Not perfect, no, but good." She turned to go, and found Toja blocking her way. "Well, move!" she demanded.

The _nazzada_ was silent, glowering at her.

In one motion, her hand blurred, and she flipped his hat off, sending it flying. As he recoiled in shock, she stepped smoothly past. Striding through the crowd, she ignored his protests, moving like a red-haired knife through the sea of people to get back to the man that she'd arrived with. She frowned for a moment, as she passed Shinji, standing there with his drink.

"I'm a little bit sorry for having to embarrass you like that in public," she said calmly, the corners of her mouth curling up in a superior manner, "but your friends are complete idiots. If they are your friends."

Shinji felt his facial muscles twitch as she walked away. "It was only a game," he muttered, as she left, his knuckles whitening. Letting out a long sigh, he took an irritated slurp of his drink, and looked over to where Toja was trying to get his hat down from the top of a machine without setting off the internal sensors.

Urgh. 'What had been that girl's problem?' he asked himself, before heading over to help his friend. Oh well. With luck, he could go plenty of time without meeting _anyone_ like that again.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Well," Asuka said, as they walked away. From her attitude, it seemed that she felt that this was sufficient.

Calvin merely raised her eyebrows. "That was not well done," he remarked.

"Not well done?" the girl asked, eyes widening. "I mean, I know, I was being a bit sloppy, because it was just a game, but I have a reason... not just an excuse, a reason! The controls were sluggish and felt wrong, and because they won't let me have the proper milspec-level enhancements I'm still nearly baseline normally and..."

The man sighed, massaging the back of his neck. "Oh, I wasn't talking about the game," he said. "Asuka... that was unnecessarily abrasive."

She frowned. "Really?" she asked, thinking for a moment. "It wasn't that bad, surely? And... come on, the hap-flip was just funny. And everyone else was impressed. What do I care about what a bunch of stupid teenage boys think? That Nazzadi one even went and blocked my way, after he was the one who went and challenged me!"

"Asuka," Cal said, his voice quiet and intense, "what have I told you about paying attention to the world, your surroundings, and generally making logical inferences when given data?"

"... but... what did I do wrong?" she asked, turning pale. "I... you..." she ran her tongue over her lips, digging her hands deeper into the pockets of her baggy jumper. "I can't see any... it..." Her brain was whirring, the gears clashing and jamming as she ran over the scene, over and over again, trying to find out _what he wanted_. "I... I wasn't able to track my Armacham bodyguards in the dense crowd in there?" Mentally she swore; Uncle Cal disliked uncertain answers like that. But it was the only thing she could think of, damn it, and... what could she have missed? From the way his expression stayed impassive, the bright lights playing over it, she was wrong. And... and... and she didn't know why and why was he unhappy with her? "_Why_ did we go there, Uncle Cal?" Asuka asked, forcing the shake out of her voice.

"That is something you should have been asking yourself earlier, isn't it?" was the response she got, as the man walked off, and she followed him, trailing behind, uncertain mind abuzz, running over the scene again and again.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

His pulse was not elevated. His pupils were not dilated. He was not sweating.

But the only reason that Ryoji Kaji was not doing any of these things was that the devices woven into his endocrinal system were regulating his hormone levels to keep him calm and emotionless. If not for that, he would have been shaking from the adrenaline which would have flooded his veins.

Activating his vocal cord bypass, he opened the secure mission channel. "We have a problem," he stated wordlessly. "The Romanian Fragment is not active. I believe it has already been replaced by a fake."

There was a pause. Then; "Are you sure?" was the anonymised response, speaking without words.

"No response to the test. Trigger status was emulated."

Another pause. "Ikari will require a new 'gift'," was the voice's first response. "A new selection has made. Scheduling handover." Another pause. "Your opinion?"

Kaji's eyebrows rose slightly, despite himself, as he flicked his eyes over the description on his harcontacts. "Valid," he forced himself to say.

"We recommend strongly that you take the next available flight from Chicago-2. Data from the UNITY system suggests that there will be a Discontinuity somewhere globally in the next 105 hours, with a sixty seven, plus or minus twenty nine, probability. We have no data from OBLIVION which might validate it. You are a valued asset; you must be in place."

The man nodded fractionally. "Understood," he wordlessly said.

"The next flight is from the Weismann Barrier Military Airport. The time of departure is 15:43. Be there at least thirty minutes before take-off. You will be travelling in acceleration gel. "

With a flick of his pony tail, the man stood. "Understood. Anything else?"

One last pause. "No, agent. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. The absence of the Romanian Fragment is of concern."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Fasten and adjust," Misato instructed her overdress, and the neat, pseudo-military garment complied. The joins at the front fused together, leaving the smart fabric to shrink slightly. Standing on tip-toes, the woman gave a spin, checking that she could move properly and that she looked all right in the mirror. "Loosen a bit. Okay, lock." The overdress, high-collared velvet black hemmed in dark green, sat snugly down to just above her knee, perfectly adjusted to her model of body, and the fact that she had a holster under it. The underdress was a paler green, and reached down to her mid-shin. Staring at herself in the mirror, Misato adjusted her pillbox hat, pinned to her tied-back black hair, and took a deep breath.

Shinji and his friends were lucky, getting to avoid this stupid test conference. The clash of egos between NEGN Project Daeva and the various Ashcroft Groups – there in an advisory role – would be something to see. Hence, it was necessary for even her dress to be considered; she, unlike Ritsuko, was a member of the New Earth Government Army as well as an employee of the Foundation. Her dress, with its cut, and the green, the colour of the NEG, was intended to remind people of that.

Not that _that _would make her much more palatable to the Navy sorts there.

Shaking her head sadly, Misato checked the clock in the top-right corner of her vision, tapping her foot. Catching a sight of herself in the mirror, she grinned, and raised her fingers in a V-sign, but her expression returned to impatience. Checking that her hat was on properly, she strode of the shared room, making her way back to the office space.

"That is true, Gendo, but..." the door slid open, and Ritsuko glanced away from her screen set-up momentarily, "Yes, yes, I understand. I've conferred with Dr Wade from Herkunft, and she's been in contact with Representative Egger...it's nice to have her on-side for once, rather than being obstructionist." A pause. "I understand, Representative." Another pause. "No, I won't be late; Misato's just shown up, probably wondering where I am. Possibly to drag me off. Was that all? Yes, goodbye, then."

Misato sighed. "Do you know what time it is?" she asked her friend.

"Yes, yes, I just had to talk with Representative Ikari about something. I was just coming. Now, I just need to... let go of my arm!"

"No!" Misato said, dragging her friend behind her. "Clearly, you can't be trusted for this!" Grabbing her friend by the arm, she frogmarched her to their shared room, sitting her down in front of the large, illuminated mirror despite Ritsuko's protests.

Then she started to pull the blonde's jumper off, over her head.

"Misato! What are you doing!" the scientist managed.

"Getting you changed, since I apparently can't trust you to change yourself," Misato retorted, with a grin on her face as she tossed the jumper into the corner, and started on her friend's t-shirt. "You haven't been eating enough, either; I can feel your bones through your arms! Rits, you have to stop starving yourself! Come on"

"... stop it!" Ritsuko managed, blushing red, blouse halfway off.

"Nope! I told you several times, and now you're running really late because you stayed in the office, rather than get changed when I... stop squirming... told you to. Now... unless you've improved at getting your make-up on at a proper rate since university... have you? I doubt you have. You haven't improved at all, have you?"

"Of course!" Ritsuko pushed the hand which was going for her bra strap away. "Urgh! You've clearly been through military stuff since then, because..."

"What's what meant to mean!" Misato retorted, hands on hips.

The blonde glared up at her. "You've clearly lost all regard for personal space in military showers!" she snapped back, grabbing her blouse and bringing it up to cover herself.

"Fiiiiine," the dark-haired woman drawled. "I'll let you have _five _minutes. Because that's basically all we have. And after that, I will be coming back in, to help you, whether you like it or not."

"Bully," Ritsuko muttered.

Misato turned at the door. "I like to think that it's a fulfilment of my duties as Director of Operations," she said, in a high-minded tone of voice. "I'm merely ensuring that assets are coordinated and prepared for a scheduled engagement." Her eyebrows raised suggestively. "If you know what I mean."

"Out!" her friend ordered, pointing at the door imperiously; an expression only slightly ruined by the pinkness of her face.

Misato saluted, turned on her heel, and marched out. And then promptly collapsed on the nearest chair she could find in tears of laughter.

"I've... I've missed doing that to h-her," she managed, when she could breathe again. Dabbing around her Eyes with her fingers, trying very hard not to smear her make-up, she let the convulsions shake her body. "Rits is s-s-so fun when she's off balance." Laughing, the black-haired woman shifted so that she wasn't sitting on her pistol, and smoothed down her overdress. "These moments... heh."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The maglev slid into the station smoothly, the doors hissing as they unsealed. The carriages half-emptied, onto the richly-decorated station platform. The three boys paused for a moment, trying to get their bearing in this verdant area, interspersed with ancient looking stone. The hexagonal-faced adamant dome reached up above them, centred on the three linked spires that made up the Chicago-2 headquarters of the Ashcroft Foundation.

"Hey, this looks sorta like the L2 Geocity," Kensuke remarked, somewhat unnecessarily.

Shinji pursed his lips, and said, "We can probably look later. At the moment... we're sort of running late. Okay," he rotated his PCPU in his hand, letting it acquire the local dome, then instructed his muse, "ARI, find the place that Misato told us to meet."

[Yes, Shinji. Searching. Follow the signs to the Centre.]

"There's the sign," Toja exclaimed, pointing to a broad ramp, to a skyway, which rose above the vegetation. He paused, looking slightly embarrassed. "We could've seen that from the way that that's the way that all the suits are going. Mmm."

The boys set off at a rapid pace, passing sharp-suited men and women, and larger, less formal groups of people who were probably tourists, based on their accents. The occasional reminders from the various muses that they were running late did not help matters, and by the time the skyway started to descend, the three of them were almost running. Several times, the local Armacham security personal seemed almost about to stop them, but the security personnel tailing them, breaking cover for the first time today, were enough to stop that further inconvenience.

By the time on the clock over the entryway, they were running almost ten minutes late by the time they got to the place where they were meant to assemble. Misato looked a little exasperated, Dr Akagi looked oddly guilty, and...

... and a _familiar _girl stared back at them with slowly dawning shock.

All a shambles, the boys came to a halt.

"Shinji," the Major said, raising her eyebrows slightly. "Get lost, did we?" She sighed. "Well, never mind. We did leave a bit of allowance for this. Anyway. Shinji, this is Asuka Langley Soryu, the Second Child. Asuka, this is Shinji Ikari."

There was a moment of sustained silence, as if the world itself was waiting for a reaction.

"What," managed Shinji.

"Seriously, what," agreed Toja.

"No way," confirmed Kensuke.

"You have to be kidding me!" exploded Asuka. "He... that _boy_ is the Third Child! That's... everything... argh!" She whirled on Dr Sylveste. "Why didn't you _say_ something!" she demanded, face red, though whether from embarrassment or anger, it was not entirely clear.

The rust-red haired man let out a thin smile. "I do believe you were paying insufficient attention to your surroundings, Asuka."

"Paying insufficient attention! How am I meant to know that a random..." something clicked in her mind, and she took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "My apologies," she said, shortly, to Shinji, before smiling at Misato. "Anyway, as I was saying before these _boys_ interrupted, you said that Captain Martello passed along my concerns about the uneven weight distribution in the right arm?"

"Yes, Asuka," Ritsuko said, smiling back in a perfunctory manner, which left the girl frowning somewhat. "So..." she shot a momentarily narrow-eyed glance at Dr Sylveste, "you... uh, met Shinji already then?"

The girl shot her own hard glance at Dr Sylveste. "Yes, apparently someone decided to have us just _stumble _into each other."

The man's mouth twitched. "Well, of course they'd already met each other," he said, answering Ritsuko's question rather that responding to Asuka. "Not for... oh, thirteen-ish years, but... yes."

Ritsuko sighed. "I think there's no need for you to show off that you were part of the original Evangelion Project," she said, a little tartly.

"Heh. Perhaps." He raised an eyebrow at Asuka. "I have to admit, I was expecting for you to recognise him. The fact that he was clearly trained should have been obvious, and," he faced Shinji, "Yes, you're certainly your father's son," he said, with a smile which seemed to be innocent. "I mean that was always clear; you have his eyes, and there's just something about the two of you which feels similar... but you have Yui's jawline."

Shinji stiffened slightly at those words. Asuka, meanwhile, was clearly suppressing a comment, but said nothing.

The Major narrowed her own eyes. "And I don't appreciate you interfering in these manners," she told the head of the Achtzig Group, bluntly, "but this isn't the place or time for this." Misato turned to face the children. "Anyway, I've booked a tour of the Ashcroft Headquarters for the four of you," she said, much more cheerfully. "I mean, you really need to get to know each other, and since you're being moved to L2, Asuka, you'll be in the same class as Shinji, as well as the other pilot."

"A class. Of children," the red-blonde girl said, her voice dripping sarcasm. "Wonderful. Can't you just move my tutors over?" There was a distinct whine to her voice.

"Yeah, if she doesn't want to have to be with us, she shouldn't have to!" Toja interjected, fists balled.

"Nonsense," Misato said, with another glare at Sylveste. "We do our best to try to keep a normal environment for our pilots. And that means school." Her Eyes flicked momentarily, as she checked the time. "Anyway, we really have to dash, I've sent your tickets to the tour on the Grid... have fun, kids!" Misato said, waving back as she headed towards the lift down to the deep-line station, along with the other adults who were headed towards the Daeva presentation.

If looks could kill, the Evangelion Group would have been looking for a new Director of Operations.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"I do apologise for how that turned out," Calvin Sylveste said to Ritsuko and Misato, once he was sure they were out of hearing range. He had the decency to look vaguely sheepish. "I was interested in seeing whether she'd remember him, and... well, personally I'd put the issue more down to his friends than him. I'm sorry to say that those two sort of clashed with Asuka."

The Major let out a slow exhalation. "Nevertheless..." she began.

"... and, perhaps, maybe I wanted to see how Yui and Gendo's boy had turned out, in a less controlled environment," the rust-red haired man said. "I was rather surprised to see that he hadn't been bought into the programme earlier. With that level of natural talent..."

"It wasn't felt to be appropriate," Dr Akagi replied, coldly.

Calvin grinned. "Ah, so Gendo was vetoing you, then?" he asked, the corners of his mouth twisting up. "You're so very like your mother, Ritsuko. Trying to keep a proper Group running with him getting in the way."

The blonde sucked in a breath. "Why are you even _here?_" she asked the man, controlled irritation in her voice. "As in, right here, right now. I thought you weren't attending for the Achtzig Group. And since we're heading to the train now..."

"No, no," the man replied, raising his hands in mock-defensiveness, "you're quite right. I was just here to get the last day with Asuka, before she heads off to L2. I'll be off, back to my labs, to work on the new TITAN devkits. We've got ten proto-gestates, so, assuming we can get them past the metastable phase into the stable phase, with no more losses... well, the third generation TITANs should start coming on line soonish." His eyebrows raised, his eyes crinkling, before his tone suddenly went much more serious. "My offer still stands to provide TITANs, to upgrade the LITANs in the Evangelions," he said, earnestly. "I remember why the Group exists, why I was brought on board in their first place and how vital it is that we have the best Evangelions we can. Even if Miyakame has forgotten with his pathetic little rip-off Engels, I haven't." And with that said, he turned on his heel, and left, not even waiting for a reply.

"That," said Misato, after a pause, "is an _annoying_ man."

"The first time you've met Calvin Sylveste, huh?" Ritsuko said, her eyebrows rising. "Yes. He's brilliant...the TITANs are built on the work that he and my mother did on the MAGI and he did the foundational work for the LITANs, but... dear gods, I want to throttle him."

Misato smirked. "Rits? You also want to throttle most of the Engel Group, whatshername from Herkunft, the Representative for Research..."

"...yes, yes," Ritsuko said tartly, "I get your point."

"... people who don't pay attention when you're going on about things which really aren't that important..."

"Enough!" The blonde took a deep breath. "This is a _purely personal _level of throttling."

"Okay, okay." Misato shrugged in surrender. "Now, should I let you build yourself up into a state of ranty irritation as we head over to the Daeva thing, or should I distract you by, you know, not letting you stew in bitterness and rage? Speaking purely as a friend, you know."

"Oh, very funny."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Things were awkward among the children.

"This? This is tedious," Asuka declared loudly, from the back of the queue of tourists to enter the facility. "I've already been on the tour. I don't need to go again."

"Well," Toja grinned, in a completely unfriendly way, "you got told to go." The girl glared at him, but didn't respond.

Shinji dug around in desperation for things to say to break the silence. "Um... you're not wearing a jumper anymore," he tried, and then cringed slightly. In the annuals of conversational ice-breakers, that was not going to go down as a particularly successful one, and the response, when it came, seemed almost predictable.

"I see you _didn't_ stop wearing your silly tourist jumper," the reddish-blonde girl shot back instantly, leaning forwards slightly. "Oh, and look, the Nazzadi is still wearing his stupid hat. Inside."

Toja puffed up. "Garden domes aren't inside!" he snapped. "And... look, it's a fashion thing!"

"Mmm. A clear statement that you look like an idiot." Asuka glanced at Shinji. "But..." she cleared her throat, "in the last few days, there's _clearly _been something wrong with the heating. It wasn't so bad, but then the temperature's been plummeting."

Shinji massaged the back of his neck. "I know what you mean," he said softly, forcing a half-smile. "I didn't bring one, so had to buy one here. This is a cold arcology... certainly compared to Tokyo-3 and London-2."

Asuka raised her eyebrows. "Thank you!" she exclaimed. "Someone else who feels cold here!"

"Oh, that explains it," Kensuke said, in a tone which was quite deliberately not talking to Asuka, yet was intentionally loud enough for her to hear. "We should excuse the way she's acting. Obviously, she's sick. Because she's making up that it's cold in this warm dome place."

"I'm not ill. I don't get sick," was the instant retort. "There's no need for some pathetic display of macho-ness." She crossed her arms. "Why," she asked imperiously, her gesture taking in Toja and Kensuke, "are these two even _here?_ I was told this was a..." she looked around, "... wasn't a tourist thing."

"We got invited along," Kensuke said, pushing his arglasses up with one finger, as he leaned forwards intently. "We're doing stuff with a friend."

"A friend, too. Not mean hat-hitting bitches," Toja added, glaring.

Asuka sniffed, and folded her arms. "Well, this is just great," she announced sarcastically. "Here I am, stuck with a bunch of idiots. And queuing for something for something I've already seen." Her brow furrowed. "I'm sorry, why are we even queuing at all? Didn't Major Katsuragi give you guest access passes?"

Shinji blinked. "Well... yeah," he began.

The girl rolled her eyes. "Idiots. Follow me, then," she said, marching off, away from the main tourist entrance, to glares from the rest of the queue. "Why would we be queuing for your passes when you _already have them_?"

"Why? Because you're the one who dragged us to this queue," Kensuke muttered rebelliously.

Shinji sighed. He could already tell that this was going to be a long day.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The bland anonymity of the mass transit system all around him, Ryoji Kaji had one of his contact lenses set to browse the Grid, while his other eye watched the world. He _had _been planning to meet up with Asuka, to say goodbye, and... well, if he could, see Katsuragi. For old time's sake, if nothing else.

Now, though? He wasn't in the right state. Not after what he'd found, and what he hadn't found, in the ABN facility. Yes, he could suppress any tells, but she knew him well enough to know that he was suppressing such things. Even after years, he didn't want to risk it.

He was just going to get to the airport as fast as possible, and get over to L2 to give Gendo Ikari his prize. And then, after that?

Kaji needed time to think. It might well not be worth his time to plan that far ahead.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The room was filled with the hushed mutter of serious-and-important people making casual-and-meaningless conversation. On the wall-sized display at the front of the room, an over-large clock counted down.

"Excuse me. Major Misato Katsuragi, Director of Operations for the Evangelion Group, yes?" Misato looked up at the tall, blonde woman – she had to be two metres, at the least – towering over her, and nodded. She couldn't quite place the accent, although she looked northern European. "I wish to speak to you. It is a matter which directly concerns you and your Group."

The dark-haired woman flashed a glance over at the clock on the mainscreen. "It won't take too long, will it? And who are you?" She was already starting to get neck-ache from staring up at the other woman, in her painfully sharp dark suit. And if the stranger – probably GIA or OIS, by Misato's reckoning - didn't have extensive subdermal plating, she'd eat her hat.

"Agent Andersdottir. And, yes, that is one of the things we must discuss. There is time," the woman said, drily. "The Daeva people have made it quite obvious."

Ristuko glanced at her, from the other side of the table set aside for the guests from the Evangelion Group, and flapped her hands at her co-worker. "Go on. Just don't be late back. I just know Tokita will go comment if you're not there, and I wouldn't want to give the man that."

Misato got to her feet, noting to herself that even standing the government agent was unreasonably tall, and followed her out, to a smaller room just off the conference hall. The taller woman ducked as she stepped under the door, into the windowless space of a holoroom. There were two chairs in here, and a desk; the agent offered a chair to Misato.

"I'll stand," was the reply.

"Heh." The other woman smiled, easily. "Perhaps I will sit and you can stand... or perch on the desk, how about that? I understand that I am quite tall." She ran a hand through her short blonde hair, and sighed. "Major Katsuragi, I am Agent Andersdottir, as I mentioned, and what I am about to tell you is all classified to the equal level of the highest levels of your authorisation." Her grammar was certainly not that of a native speaker. "I am from the Office of Special Services, and this is about the Harbingers. Specifically, we have information off the UNITY grid which would suggest that Harbinger-6 is expected sometime within the next four days. Odds are about seven in ten, although that is with sizable error bars, as is normal for UNITY. About thirty percent."

The Major narrowed her Eyes, mind whirring. "Location?" she asked, one single, curt word.

A shrug. "UNITY is not that precise, Major. You should know that, yes?" The Major did not, in fact, know that, and filed that information away for later reference. "But... from the previous instances, it is likely that it will target London-2... although we have already advised that all other Geocities should be on high alert, especially Tokyo-3, and the Berlin-2 Containment Perimeter."

The dark-haired woman smoothed down the sleeve of her black overdress, and thought. "Unit 02 is almost ready for transit. Unit 01's still out of action; Unit 00 is damaged but can be deployed. We'll try to move the schedule for Unit 02's movement ahead as much as we can... possibly tonight."

"Which is where we run into the second problem," Agent Anderdottir said, sighing heavily. "Migou movements over the Atlantic are increased. It is not felt that a superheavy lifter will necessarily be able to pass in safety. However, a solution has been arranged." She snapped her fingers, and a projection of the Atlantic appeared in the air. "The _Over The Rainbow_ will be part of a battlegroup departing at 4am tomorrow morning. The OSS has secured transit space aboard for the Evangelion Group. We believe it is vital that you have two Evangelions combat-ready. Harbinger-05 was alarming."

The Major let out a breath. "Yes. And... you arranged for a superheavy carrier? I'm impressed."

"Major," the agent said, expression grim, "the OSS is quite aware of the threats posed by Harbinger-level entities. The Evangelions have killed three so far. I, just as you, am aware of what happened the last time a Harbinger intruded, and could not be dealt with as cleanly as Harbingers-3, -4 and -5 were." She massaged the back of her neck. "We will also be locating a UNITY node onboard the ship. You will be transporting it with the Evangelion; with luck, if the Harbinger does attack a location before you make your way back to London-2, we will at least be able to get a better 'look'," the inverted commas dropped around the word like tongs, "at it. Another point for triangulation."

The Major nodded. "I understand."

"The Navy will be in contact, Major. You will be able to move the transport forwards, we believe. Let us hope it goes well, eh?"

As Misato left the room, and made her way back to the conference hall, she was... uncomfortable. The woman, the OSS agent – and that was rare enough, for the OSS didn't legally exist, instead existing only as a men-in-black group – had been... there was something off.

And as she sat down, she realised what it was. The woman had been giving her more information than she needed. The OSS didn't do that. Even the OIS or the GIA parcelled out facts like misers. Hells, if you came down to it, her own superiors were certainly not telling her things. So... why would the Office of Special Services do it? Either they were very, very worried, or they were planning something.

Misato Katsuargi wasn't sure which was worse.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The first sign to Shinji Ikari that the somewhat-limited patience of Asuka Langley Soryu had expired completely was the sudden grab-and-yank on his right arm, as she pulled him out of the tour group and down a different corridor. From the ache in his arm, she was notably stronger than he was.

"What are you doing?" he managed.

The girl waited until they were both out of sight of the rest of the party before pausing, and, quite deliberately, looking up and down, head tilted slightly as she scrutinised him. "Now that we're in private... you are a pilot, aren't you?" she asked, ignoring his question. "Just to make quite clear. You actually, really are the Third Child? Pilot of Evangelion Unit 01?"

Shinji straightened up, quite aware that he was looking up at her. "Yes," he said. He paused. "It's true," he added, in case his previous statement was not enough.

"Well... that's a little disappointing," the red-blonde girl remarked, after a pause.

That, in itself, was more than a little offensive, and Shinji puffed up his chest in response. "What's that meant to mean?" he retorted.

"The Third Child has three kills, officially," was the girl's clinical answer. "Well... not really three, because I reviewed the tape, and you _clearly _weren't in control against Harbinger-3, and, likewise... come on! The NEGA had already blown Harbinger-4 in half! That doesn't count as an unassisted kill." She paused, taking a breath, as her cheeks faded from pink. "But," she said, almost grudgingly, "I saw what you did against Harbinger-5, in the after-action review. And that level of AT-Field control." Tilting her head, the girl tapped one finger against her red lips. "It was impressive," the girl finally said, as if that was the highest level of praise. "I'd have to work to do the same. It almost makes up for the inadequate level of the rest of your combat performance."

"Inadequate? What's so..."

"What's your personal best velocity in atmosphere?"

"Um..."

"What's your reaction time in milliseconds?"

"Uh... wait, I haven't answered the first..."

"You're a Type-1 Synch, while I'm a Type-2. What's your compensation factor for second-order harmonics?"

Shinji blinked. "What does that even mean?" he asked.

The girl put one hand on her him, and glared down her nose at him. "There are all basic things," she said. "How can you not know them?"

The boy puffed up his chest, glaring back at the girl. He had had enough of this. She was being... this was just _rude_, and... he gritted his teeth. "Well, I'm dreadfully sorry," he drawled. "I mean, it's really inexcusable me not knowing this. All these basic facts. I should of course have memorised this all in the _less-than-three _months I've been doing this." Shoulders hunched, he turned his back on her, and started to walk away.

Only to be whirled around. "What do you mean, three _months_?" Asuka Langley Soryu asked him, eyes slightly wild. "You mean _years_, right?"

The boy's nose wrinkled slightly, and he looked away, focussing on the corner of the wall over her shoulder. There was a crack in the wall there, he noticed idly; right on the join, a spider-like split of radiating hairline legs. "No," he said, still not looking at her. "Months."

"You're lying," she accused him.

His burst of laughter was cut short, and completely without humour. "The first time I ever got in an Eva was the day Harbinger-3 arrived. If you _must _know." She let go of him, suddenly, and he sagged slightly. "Now, really, this was meant to be my first weekend off when I'm not stuck in a hospital, and..."

"... no." She was in front of him again, blocking him, but her expression was different. Where there had been a certain adversarial tension, Shinji was fairly sure that her face was now set in curiosity, and he could not but shudder as a certain premonition told him that her curiosity was quite possibly more dangerous than her opposition. "That... I saw the synch ratios for that fight. That _can't_ be possible." She grabbed his hand again, this time taking the actual hand rather than his wrist. "Come on. We need to talk properly. They wouldn't tell me anything about you... where have you trained before? I've been to Facility 2501 on the Eastern Front, Facility 0343 over in Australia... they've moved me around quite a bit, because Unit 02 is the Production Model, and..." she smirked, "I'm technically the most experienced ACXB pilot in NEG service. _Including_the Engel Group. Let's get a coffee or something. Actually, I know a place here at Headquarters that is pretty good... not as good as the places in Ostberlin-2, of course, but that's to be expected. And it might be warmer down there. I can't believe the temperature's playing up here, of all places. It was warmer a few days ago!"

Shinji was swept away by the current of the Second Child, stuck in her eddies as she ploughed through the high corridors of Ashcroft Headquarters.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The conference hall was amphitheatre-like, the floor configured so that the speaker was at the bottom of a shallow stepped progression. The wall behind the central stage was currently set to transparency save for the clock counting down, showing a slightly green-hued view of the testing grounds outside. The upper spires of Chicago-2 were just visible on the horizon, along with a few closer conduit-arcologies, whose blocky, low pyramidal structures were much more akin to the ones seen in other Regions.

The _nazzada_ making his way centre of the stage was pale by the standards of his people, his skin slate-grey. Despite pressure that he was surely under, in this patch of light surrounded by often ill-inclined observers, he looked perfectly calm, as he paused at the lectern, waiting for one of his subordinates – a younger man who had stumbled slightly over some of the technical details, to Ritsuko's glee – to vacate the stage.

Ritsuko chuckled. "I wonder how hard they had to work to get this place back to operational condition after the Unit 02 test. The Second Child really tore up the ground," she said, softly. "Or, indeed, how many safety features and deliberate maximum output caps the Daeva people overrode to try to beat us." A small smile crept onto her face. "I do hope they haven't done anything foolish. Because, either way they won't be good enough."

"You shouldn't wish ill on another weapons team," Misato chided her.

"Oh, I'm not wishing ill," the blonde said, with a shrug. "I'm mildly concerned that they're going to let their egos run wild. When, the fact is, they can't beat an Evangelion." She smiled malevolently. "I can't wait to see the expression on their faces, though, when all their work is judged to be... oh, just not up to standards. Not quite satisfactory. Lacking in..."

"Yes, yes, I get your point, stop gloating, Rits. He's about to start." And, indeed, the room fell silent as the man cleared his throat.

"Ladies, gentleman, thank you for attending this evaluation meeting for the latest output of the New Earth Government Naval Project Daeva," the man announced, the wall behind him gaining an entopic of the emblem of the Navy, and the green-triangle-on-white flag of the New Earth Government. "I am the chief engineer on this project, I wish to thank you all for making time to attend, to both senior members of the Navy, and of course those among you who are here in an advisory role, to see the public testing of the Daeva Advanced Heuristic Amphibious Combat Automaton, which will be referred to from here on in as DAHACA. Under the tasks for the development of our unit, we were tasked with designed and constructing a corvette-grade unit, capable of supporting amphibious operations"

Despite the known dislike that Tokita, the Chief Engineer of Project Daeva had for the Ashcroft Foundation and the Advisors who, even now, watched him, his tone was courteous, if slightly chilly. Leaning backwards slightly, he raised one hand. "You will observe the official demonstration from the observation bays. But before we head over there... does anyone have any questions?"

An olive-skinned woman in a naval uniform stood. "In the previous section, your subordinate mentioned that DAHACA was designed to be operated by one pilot, guiding the heuristic logic network of the ACA. What level of enhancement is required for the pilot to be able to guide this, and would it not be better to delegate command more?"

"The pilot's enhancement level?" Tokita echoed, smiling. "The Mass Production Model is designed to be piloted by anyone of E-IV or higher; Lieutenant Krishima is a specialised E-V, due to other issues unrelated to her piloting of the Daeva. With the necessary implant-interface requirements, along with the long-duty emplacement, anything below a category E is out of the question. We have an eventual goal that an E-IV level enhancement package can be specifically designed, due to the fact that, as a superheavy mecha, certain features in the standard E-IV package, which is after all intended for fighter pilots, who have rather different operational requirements, are unneeded. Preferably, we would like for E-II grade pilots to be able to use it, in order to open up the candidate pool, but under current circumstances, this prototype design requires E-IV levels or higher." He rested his hands more heavily on the lectern. "As for the task... yes, we understand clearly that the current naval paradigm is based around multi-crew ships. However, that was not an option for DAHACA. With the unorthodox means of locomotion, combined with the fact that it's piloted by direct neural interface, we found that attempts to even set up a triparate command system produced unacceptable levels of noise. That is part of the reason for our own advances in Limited Artificial Intelligence; we wish to lighten the load on the pilot as much as possible." Whitened teeth glittered, as he added, "We look forwards to sharing these advances with the rest of the Navy."

Misato blinked, narrowing her eyes. Those were _heavy_levels of enhancement. She, a former assault mecha pilot, was only upgraded to E-III standards. It certainly didn't look fast enough to need that level of acceleration tolerance. She glanced sideways at her friend, who was sitting there, legs crossed, a slight smirk on her face. "Aren't you going to say anything?" she whispered. "I thought you'd be verbally eviscerating him."

The smirk on Ritsuko's face grew wider. "No, not right now," she muttered back. "I think I'll let them show off their little toy. They can show the world what they can do in ideal circumstances, right before I bring it down on their head that they're just _worse_." She tilted her head slightly. "Feel free to smile at him, too," she added.

Tokita flinched slightly, next time he glanced up to see the Evangelion team beaming down at him, but rallied well, to take a question from the Achtzig contingent on the precise details of their LAI network. The next question and the one after that both came from the Engel Group, asking about the structure and certain design choices – although the word 'compromises' was used instead – which had been made, a hint of criticism creeping as Dr Malia Robinson, Deputy Director of Science for the Group, gleefully pointed out that the Daeva required a Restricted Technology Exemption for its endostructure, and wasn't it slightly dishonest to not reveal that in the main technological briefing?

And then one of the Naval Admirals, known for his close ties to the Marines – who just happened to be large-scale users of the ACXB mecha provided by the Engel Group – asked a particularly cutting question about cost-overruns, and the precise utility gained by this when conventional corvettes served the role well.

And again. And again. Tokita kept calm, kept controlled, because this was an ambush he had expected. He was always going to get a hammering from the Ashcroft Groups; from the Evangelion Group – who were being suspicious silent for direct rivals – and from the theoretically-neutral other groups, who were 'advising' on the use of extranormal materials in the DAHACA and on its LAI systems, to make sure none of it was illegal. But it was, nevertheless, an ambush. And his trump card, the actual display of the working DAHACA Prototype, had been pre-empted by the public unveiling of the Evangelion Group, just three days before, with their Production Model and proven track record.

When he'd taken this job, elements in the Admiralty had warned him that it might be a trap. But... no-one could have a trap set up which was older than Project Daeva itself, right?

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"And this area is where several of the technology groups who work on the modern high-end plasma physics used in many modern weapons systems have offices," the tour guide continued, gesturing around, to take in the many-levelled corridor. Of particular note was the lightning-bright conduits, bent into structures and shapes of modern art, of many hues. "Here you can see the plasma that they work with... come in, gather closer. This is probably the closest that any of you have been to the famous 'fourth state of matter'. These particular examples are _five_ times hotter than the surface of the sun, if you can believe it, and are confined through the combination of sorcery and technology that the Ashcroft Foundation is the leading pioneers in."

Toja stuck his hands in his pockets. "I can't help but feel sorta cheated," he muttered. "I mean, Shinji leaves us behind... well, he gets dragged off by a red-headed bitch, leaving us on this stupid tour, and Miss Katsuragi is busy, although she did look really pretty in that dress... mmm." He shook his head. "So... why are we even on this tour, then?" He nudged Kensuke. "Eh, Ken?"

"Shhh!" the arglassed boy hissed back. "This is fascinating." He raised one hand. "Excuse me?" he asked the tour guide. "Is this where the Helios Group is located?"

"Indeed it is," the tour guide replied, beaming. "Are you interested in plasmas or high energy physics research, young man?"

"I'm a member of the L2 Naval Cadets, and I've been on NEGS Archimedes and..."

"Oh, the test-bed ship?" the man replied, perking up himself. "I saw the demonstration videos and... wow. The intensity and the size of the craters it left when it used that ventral plasma weapon..."

"It is _every_ bit as good as it looks, and more," Kensuke confirmed. "I got to see a test-firing, in person. They got us up on the bridge, and gave us photomasks and let us watch a firing. The steam explosion when they fired it at the water? That was _so _worth watching."

"No doubt, no doubt." By now, the guide was more than a little distracted from his task. "Anyway, the next place on the tour is the Museum of Arcanotech, which is built in the old particle test chamber which was where Ladisalao discovered the first r-state element with an r-value over ten. Just follow me, and we'll be going down the deep lift." He turned back to Kensuke. "You saw an Archimedes test in person?"

Toja sighed, at the rather too-enthusiastic display of male bonding. "Figures," he said to himself, and sighed again, scuffing his shoes as Kensuke and the man babbled at each other. "Should've got Shinji to invite Enis or Hikari 'long. Would've been more fun, even with the Class Rep here."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Damn them! Damn them all! Damn, damn, damn!" The PCPU broke in the man's hands, as he took his rage out on perfectly innocent consumer electronics, and he swore, dropping it. Nostrils flaring, Tokita turned to punch the wall, but common sense overrode his anger, and he instead booted the nearby bin as hard as he could, sending it flying with a satisfying clatter. "Why! Why are they doing this! Damn corrupt megacorp lackeys and their bought admirals! This is some kind of petty revenge for anyone else even _daring _to try to innovate, isn't it! Petty, stupid, stupid, spiteful!" Hands balled into fists, he snarled in rage. "I just want to _hit_someone!" he yelled, down in this room safely away from onlookers, stomping over to give the bin another kick.

"Stop it, sir, it makes you look like a baby," the younger woman on the screen in the room said. Her reddish-brown hair was removed, to reveal the woven carbon underneath, and her synthetic skull locked into place in the insertion suit. Her still visible mouth smiled, cheerfully. "They're trying to show off and intimidate you. They're small, petty people."

"But how on earth did they know all those details on our endostructure? Or the work on the systems intelligence?"

Lieutenant Mana Krishima sighed, shaking her head slightly, as artificial muscles whined. "That probably means we have a leak."

Tokita snarled, "Then what's our security doing, if that sort of thing can get out? Can't we get them done for industrial espionage?" His brows furrowed. "No, of course not. Because they probably just _asked_ one of their _friends_ to _give_ it to them. Well, we'll show them. Are you ready, Krishima?"

"Sir? This is my little baby," the young woman said with a smirk from within her armoured tomb. "Of course I'm ready. Dahac's reading green, and I'm ready to show off."

A figure superimposed itself on the screen; a stylised, iron-grey draconic icon. [Tokita, you are expected back for the test in ten minutes,] stated Dahac, the systems intelligence of DAHACA, in a deep mechanical voice. [Ensure that your appearance is satisfactory.]

"Your stage make-up is running a bit," Mana confirmed. "You should get one of the PR people to look at it."

With a sigh, frustration still evident, Tokita stalked out of the room, and Mana closed the link with a sigh of relief. Though, as she was already in DAHACA, her body was completely immobilised save for her face, here she was free. Paralysed within a tomb, cortical shunts and jacks and threads, her body was only so much meat and technology. Within the virtual world where she now waited for her signal to begin, there was freedom.

On a white plane she waited, the sky filled with data and the iron dragon of Dahac coiled around her.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Shinji looked up from his hot chocolate, to find a pair of blue eyes staring at him. His gaze quickly dipped again.

"Moving onto me," she continued, both hands wrapped around her cup, "I've been piloting since I was four, before there was even the Children programme. Don't pay attention to the numerical system, because the only reason I'm the Second Child, rather than the First is that 'Soryu' comes after 'Ayanami' in the alphabet. You wouldn't _believe _the hassle I had to go through to find that such a stupid reason like that was true."

Shinji found himself zoning out. A glance around this cafeteria, down somewhere under the main facility, revealed... well, he could have been in any number of identical places down in the L2 Geocity. The false-light windows in the ceiling showed a sky rather more blue than the actual one outside, and tired-looking scientists were imbibing caffeine in clusters. They were past several levels of security cordon here – and Asuka had been somewhat annoyed that he also had clearance to be here – and so this was where the dedicated employees dwelt. Just the signs on the way here were a sign of how deep they were, pointing to areas and groups with all sorts of unnecessarily German names; Engel, Herkunft, Mnemosyne, even a small section – which Asuka had cut through – for Evangelion, even if they been mostly PR people. The glares that some of the staff directed at the two Children might have been a sign that they'd been recognised, although that might have also been something to do with the two teenagers taking a shortcut through their workplace. Especially when one of them had been loudly stating that 'they wouldn't mind' and 'it's a shortcut, it doesn't matter'.

"... and that's another question," she continued, "... I know you said that you're woefully undertrained...although, of course, since you're the new Third Child, I knew you had to have started training in 2084 or later, but you've been placed in London-2, and I know that the First Child has been in the Children Programme since I got started... well, how good is the First Child?"

"The First Child? Rei?" Shinji echoed, refocusing on her.

"So you know her? Well enough to be on a first name basis? Or not?"

"... uh." Shinji paused. "Well, yeah, broadly, I mean, sort of..." he took a breath, and tried to settle his thoughts, ignoring the flicker of irritation on the girl's face. "I mean, I've sort of seen her about for two months, but I don't really _know _her know her, if you see what I mean... although," he massaged the back of his neck, "she did distract Harbinger-5 so I could take the shot. It was very brave of her."

"Yes, but what's her piloting like?" The red-blonde girl didn't seem willing to leave the subject until she had an answer.

"Uh, well, she can walk around... and run." Shinji was quite aware of how pathetic that sounded, so hastened to add, "Her synch ratio is lower than mine, but that's not really a fair comparison, because she was injured in a start-up accident which was the entire reason I got pulled into this. She only managed a successful start-up... you know, after they repaired the Eva... the day before Harbinger-5 showed up. She managed to dodge a shot from Mot which," his hand went to his chest, "I didn't, though."

Asuka sat, with her chin propped on both hands, staring at him. Observers from the side or back, who couldn't see the look in her Eyes, might have thought it was a date. "When you say 'managed a successful start up'... for the first time ever?" she asked, with a sort of quiet intensity in her voice which left Shinji on edged.

"I don't know," was his tactful response. "Probably not? I mean... I really don't know."

"Well, no, of _course_you don't. You don't seem to know anything." The girl frowned, and tilted her head, "That makes complete sense, if you were an emergency pilot pulled in because you were thought to have a talent for piloting. No one could have guessed that the First Child could manage to injure herself and damage her Eva in a botched start-up; I've certainly never done that. Honestly, why they didn't just move me over from the Eastern Front? Some of us have actual combat experience, and training. And yours is completely inadequate, did I mention?"

Shinji coughed. "Uh... yes, you did. More than once," he added, the words slipping out. The boy took a breath. "Yes, I've only been doing this for a little bit. Before then... well, I was in Tokyo-3, with my foster-mothers, and then my father called me up... not even telling me what he wanted me for, and then stuck me in a giant robot."

The girl shot him a flicking smile, there and gone. "Of course, you're doing _quite _well for how little experience you have," she said, in a manner which suggested that it was effusive praise. "Uncle Cal mentioned that your parents were both on the original Evangelion Project, so I thought you might have got the Evangelion by nepotism after seeing your first combat tapes. But, no, it turns out you actually are this untrained."

"Some nepotism," Shinji muttered. "I never asked for this."

"Anyway," Asuka continued brightly, as if she hadn't heard him, "hurry up and finish your drink. Next, we're going to see Unit 02, so you can see what a proper Production Model is like, rather than the Test Model. Maybe they'll even upgrade your one to proper specs next, so you should get to see what you might be able to get."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Compared to the conference room, the observation bay was far more Spartan. Although a local network was broadcasting datafeeds for users with Eyes or harcontacts, most were still choosing to watch on the large screen in front of them. The light snow had stopped, although the ground was covered in slightly grey, polluted whiteness.

Dr Ritsuko Akagi was one of the minority who was not, and so was flicking through the various viewpoint cameras around the test course. Misato pouted slightly, as it was clear that she wasn't about to get any conversation in any dull bits, and glanced at Captain Martello, on her right, from the Unit 02 team.

... yeah, she thought to herself, she didn't _really _need to talk.

"Now," Tokita began, standing back at a rather-unnecessary control panel, "... we'll begin the demonstration of DAHACA. We like to think this might be the start of a new era of fear for our enemies."

With those words, the launch silo rose from the ground, the ground-height camera staring up at a skyscraper of grey metal, which slid open to reveal its contents. There was a pause, and a rustle from the onlookers at this, because it was apparently empty.

Tokita smiled broadly. "Feature one," he announced, "active and passive stealth. Due to its unique low-energy endostructure, despite its size DAHACA runs heat-neutral. As a result, prior to battle damage, the unit has an average c-rating of 0.92 for the HMD spectrum range, when operating at ground level. This is reduced when operating aerially or underwater, but remains above the current corvette-class standard for conventional units."

"And," Ritsuko said softly, in words intended for Misato's ears, "that wouldn't have meant a thing against Mot."

The man continued, "But I think it would be hard for us to demonstrate it, without a good look at it."

And then, as if a switch had been flicked, there was suddenly something there. What it was, was somewhat difficult to classify. The Evangelions were humanoid, even anthropoid, in a twisted way. This most certainly was not. Though it had two arms, and two legs, they were strangely boneless appendages anchored to a central torso. The 'arms' seemed somewhat longer than the legs; perhaps that was how the entire torso could be at an incline, despite the fact that both 'hands' and 'feet' – which upon closer inspection were the same kind of appendage – were on the ground. The scale on the feed showed that it would have been around fifty metres had it stood upright, but instead it was in a knuckle-walking crouch, such that the heavy weapons that festooned its back like porcupine spikes were pointed forwards. The entire war machine was painted in tan-and-crimson test-colours, which just made its previous invisibility more peculiar.

"That," Misato said, tilting her head, "looks sort of like a headless dog." She tilted her head the other way. "Or maybe an ape. With no head. And... like, spears in its back."

"Feature two," Tokita continued. "Although it is fully flight capable, the use of limbs allows DAHACA to anchor itself. This means that the _single_ most powerful plasma weapon of any corvette-class ship in NEGN service, or on the drawing boards of _any _NEG mobile platform is built ventrally into the torso. Were this fitted on a conventional corvette, it would not be able to use ground-hugging manoeuvres, as the recoil on this would make it risky. But with the ability to anchor itself, and the sophisticated AMCU designed for this unit, DAHACA can operate on two legs, four, and of course still fly like a modern-generation naval unit." The whispers were louder, and the man smiled. "Perhaps we might have a demonstration of the destructive firepower of this unit. Perhaps on that building over there."

A white lance from the bulge at the front of the machine blinded the camera, and when it cleared, not only was the building slag, but the entire fabricated block.

"Did I mention that the ventral plasma weapon has the full range of varying confinement options?" he added, an almost schoolboy-like cheek in his voice, as DAHACA settled into its full range of combat protocols. Just like they had planned.

"You have to admit, that plasma cannon is pretty nice," Misato muttered.

"No, I don't have to," was Ritsuko's grimaced response.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The man tilted his head, fractionally, as something chimed in his ear. [Alert,] the deep voice of Dahac reported, [Lieutenant Krishima has flagged fluctuations in Engine/Sink Pairs One, Three, Seven, Nine, and Ten, for possible evaluation.]

"Serious?" he subvocalised, keeping the smile on his face, as he watched the audience and their responses.

There was a moment's pause. [The technical team advises that all acts classed Demanding on Engine/Sink output be removed from the test,] the systems intelligence stated. [This is justified on the precautionary principle.]

"So merely as a precaution; no confirmed issue?" he muttered back.

[Yes.]

"Keep on going. Run the full test. We can't let those bastards beat us. If Krishima believes she can do it," he added, after a moment's thought.

"I do," the young woman's voice responded instantly. "I just flagged them as protocol, because it's unusual. They're well within acceptable bounds."

"Then go ahead. I trust your judgement that things will be okay."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The two Children were deep now, far below Chicago-2, and to Shinji the corridors and lifts could have been in the Geocity, for all he knew. It was oddly reassuring, in some ways; quite unlike the open light city above. Although the fact that it was warmer did help; warm enough to remove his jumper as he trailed after the Second Child.

"Listen," Shinji began, as yet another lift took them down, trying to work out the best way to put this on the fly, "... uh, about earlier today. We might have got off on the wrong foot, but... well, you were being sort of rude, and..." he paused, trying to see if he had set anything off in this conversational minefield. "I had no idea you were a pilot!" he finally blurted out.

Her eyebrows raised. "Weren't these," she pointed at the red clips in her hair, "a clue?" Asuka drawled. "You weren't wearing yours."

"Well... no." Shinji felt that wasn't sufficient, so he added, "I don't wear them around... neither does Rei, and both of ours are white. I... didn't make the mental leap." He could feel a comment about his intelligence coming, so continued, "So what I was trying to say was, I'm sorry for how it all happened."

The girl harrumphed, but nodded. "Fair enough," she said. "And... I'd have done it differently if I'd known you were the Third Child," she not-quite-apologised. "Now, come on, we're almost there."

With a chime, the lift doors opened. And now Shinji was sure that he wasn't in London-2, because this Evangelion launch facility was so much smaller. There were only two launch points, one of them filled with a matt-grey pod the size of a skyscraper.

Asuka's face fell. "Oh," she remarked. "It's already been prepared for transport?" She shrugged. "Well, that's not the dramatic image I wanted. I can still show it to you."

"How?" Shinji asked, looking around. Yes, this entire area looked subtly newer, and yet slightly worse maintained than then bays in the Geocity; like it had been built, and never really used.

She let out an elaborate sigh. "We go _into _the transportation pod. Idiot."

Shinji let out a nervous laugh. "Oh. That easy, huh?"

No, it was not that easy, as it turned out. The technician standing by the entryway to the Evangelion transport pod respectfully, yet firmly, told Asuka when she demanded to get in, that work was still going on to ready Unit 02 for transport. The woman proved adamant against both requests, and orders, and so Asuka stalked back to Shinji, face slightly red.

"Well, that's _that_ ruined due to other people," she muttered. "Right. We're going to see if they've moved the training equipment, because if they haven't, we're going head-to-head, so I can see how good you are."

"I... don't think that's really necessary," Shinji protested, as they headed away from the launch bay, and into carpeted office corridors. "I mean, I've only been doing this for two months, and you said you've been doing it for years. Can't we just go topside again?"

She narrowed her eyes. "What, don't you take this seriously?" Asuka said, as if it was a personal insult. "I'm going to have you at my back some time. You know, with the massive robot and the giant weapon and things. I want to see how good you are in real life, rather than just watching videos of you."

The boy massaged the back of his neck. "That's fair enough," he admitted. She was annoying, and rude, and bossy... but that was actually a good point. And the noise of satisfaction she made, when a glance through a window revealed that there what looked like simulation pods still here... well, it probably boded him-losing, but at least they looked like the dry simulation pods. He didn't have his plug suit here, and he didn't want to spend time in LCL if he didn't have to.

His chain of thought snapped, and the boy flinched, feeling as if a bucket of ice-cold water had been dumped on his head. From the way Asuka reacted, she'd felt exactly the same thing.

"What was that?" he asked, suddenly concerned.

Asuka's Eyes were wide, head twitching from one side to another as she shivered. "Something has just gone very wrong," she said, without any uncertainty in her voice.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Ryoji Kaji tried not to panic, as he felt his lungs fill with the clear impact gel. He was used to it. He didn't need to worry. It was going to be fine.

These were all lies according to his body, which knew that he was strapped into a clear-faced coffin, flooding with something that looked like viscous water. Despite all his preparations, he still thrashed around, gasping for air which did not come. And yet, despite the fact that it was not air he was breathing, his lungs could still move.

[Pulse; elevated. Stress levels; within normal bounds,] was the now muffled voice of the LAI monitoring his loading into the grey-painted craft. [Proceeding onto step three once pulse has decreased to acceptable levels.]

This wasn't a luxury Ashcroft cargo module that he would be travelling in. This wasn't even the cramped conditions of the still-extortionate civilian intercontinental travel. This was a military transport pod, where the closest thing you got to a stewardess was the possibly-a-woman who was guiding the robot which loaded your coffin-like pod into a rack, to be unloaded at the other end. It was designed to fit as many people in as possible, and ensure that if the craft had to pull military grade evasive manoeuvres, the cargo-passengers would end up bruised, rather than dead. It was not, in any way, shape, or form, designed for comfort, which is why individuals were sedated for the duration of the transport.

Kaji sighed, and took a breath of the impact gel, his lungs protesting slightly at the increased viscosity. Already, he could see the serpentine arm of the loader selecting pods from the queue in front of him, and slotting them into place. At least the gel muted the noise of this place. He wished that he could slow his pulse down automatically, but the endocrinal adjustments needed for that might react with the sedative.

And... God, he had a good reason to be worried, quite apart from the fact that he felt like he had just drowned. There were things concealed in the package he had that certain divisions of the FSB, GIA, OIS, NEGA, NEGN, and for all he knew, the Chicago-2 Arcology Security Traffic Department would be rather excited in knowing he had. So excited, in fact, that he might just die from the joy and love that they would be spreading around the place. In fact, he was mildly concerned that he might not wake up, that there might be an 'accident' in transit.

But... no. If he had the Romanian Fragment with him, it might have been different; for that reason he would have been travelling another way. But with the replacement offering?

No. No one should know that he had it. No one at all. And there was no way of finding it. It should be unseen to arcane scans; invisible to parapsychics and electromagnets alike.

Hopefully.

Kaji really hoped his handlers were right about that bit.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Major Katsuragi's nostrils flared wide, and she took a sudden, shocked gasp of air, letting it out in a stream of badly pronounced Chinese profanities. The others around here were spared the tedious necessity of asking her to explain what she meant by that, as orange-hued lightning arced through the sky to the north, beyond the figure of DAHACA, froze. Curving and bending, the unnatural radiance wove a grid, as overhead, light burning through the snowclouds, the heavens ignited in an _aura borealis_.

And from between the gaps in the grid, the world itself ruptured, breaking and cracking such that the grid was now more akin to light from within a cosmic egg. The burning lights above warped and twisted, the sky expanding to reach and compress the land and the ground rising motionless to touch it, as sensors screamed.

The world-egg hatched.

Down from the heavens, the ocean fell, an albumen wreathed in noxious orange-lit clouds. And something vast and ancient and horrible swam in these waters.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Something shook the building to the very foundations, walls cracking and corridors slumping, so that that which had once been plane was no longer so bound. Cascading ripples of power failures cut illumination and tore cables from the ruined walls, leaving only the dim redness of emergency light. In one sector, a series of thuds signalled the emergency shutdown of one of the generators, for the casing was ruptured and a Horizon Event immanent.

And, down in the lower levels, Shinji Ikari and Asuka Langley Soryu were sent sprawling to the now-quivering floor, to a choir of immaculate sirens. Together, they both exhaled impulsively, sudden waves of bone-deep chill overcoming them like a perverse fever. The lights flickered, and within their heads, the draperies of veins formed a corona around the edge of their sight. Sound was muffled from without, and the breaths and beating of their hearts was all that could be heard.

Asuka groaned, raising her head from the floor, feeling her arm muscles protest. It felt like she'd skinned her knees, and she was lying on something hard and irregular, digging into her chest. The thing made muffled noises, and she rolled aside, which allowed Shinji to take an explosive intake of breath.

"Oww..." he managed, panting, one hand going to feel the back of his head. "That hurt."

For her part, the girl's hands went protectively up to the front of her sundress, where his face had just been, before they dropped again. There was a throbbing sensation in her own skull, which felt quite entirely unlike the sharper, clean pain of a gash, and the resultant trickle of blood from her forehead. There was a false-colour aura around things, which either meant that she had a concussion, or there was an extranormal entity nearby.

Even in her possibly-concussed state, Asuka couldn't help but correct her own thoughts. It could be both.

Shinji groaned again. "What's up with the lights?" he managed, as the building creaked above him, the noises from the spires above reverberating down to set up ghostly interplays of structural echoes. "All red."

"Emergency lighting," Asuka stated, for her own part.

"Why does this remind me of the last time I was almost nuked?" Shinji groaned. "'Course, Misato was heavier than you."

With an irritated flick of her head, and a glare, the red-blond girl sat up, the floor still shifting under her. "No," was her response, cold and crisp. "Can't you feel the difference? Something is clearly _continuously_ shaking HQ; a danger-close to a tactical weapon doesn't feel like this." Sliding across the floor, she managed to get to the wall, and lever herself up using the ledge. "Come on!"

"Come on where?" Shinji asked, rubbing his aching wrists. "Where's the evac route?"

"Not the evacuation routes, idiot!" Asuka snapped, her calm breaking. "We're going to Unit 02. If this is a major attack, I'll be needed, and you're the pilot of Unit 01. You'll be _useless _if you're a pancake in the rubble of Ashcroft HQ, and an Eva is always the safest place to be."

With a groan, Shinji managed to pull himself up onto all fours, and then lurch over to the handrail himself. "Safest place," he muttered, somewhat bitterly. "Yes, the giant robot they send me to fight monsters in. Safe."

There was a low and worryingly intense noise in the Second Child's throat. "Yes," she growled – there really was no other word to describe. "If anything happens, get to your Eva. You _should _know this. Even if you're a complete newcomer. Even... even if there's s-something like a massive chromatic leak. It's safe." And turning her back on him, she set off, Shinji reluctantly following, more scared to be left alone. Working hand-over-hand, they headed off back the way they came, even as the floor shook and foundations screamed.

Only for the floor to shake once again, greater than before, and the walls to rupture.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The beast from the heavens was vaguely white, a shape reminiscent of earthly aquatic life, and this similarity was only made more similar by the vile, toxic afterbirth of oil-slick waters which accompanied it. Roaring, screaming with a cacophony which shattered glass and left unprotected eardrums bleeding, the monster smashed into a glittering tower, and rent it asunder, a rain of adamant crystals flung over the city. The opalescent, greasy waters hit like a battering ram across the city. And around them, as this terrible cataclysm hit, the air of earth began to freeze even as the boiling waters revealed themselves to not be water, but instead a sea of hydrocarbons emptying themselves from gods knew where.

Harbinger-6 tore into Chicago-2, to the soft patter of a nitrogen rain.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

And in that shining grotto beneath the sea the towering figure, a spawn of distant stars, rumbled. The base note made the water that filled the space susurrate, in a rhythmic rising and falling.

One move made. One ancient ally called upon. And one step, perhaps, closer to the day when the sunken city of its elder kin would rise again.

* * *

~'/|\'~


	18. Chapter 17: I Shall Always Arise

_A's N's:__ Yes, this is a shorter than average chapter. AEE will be getting a double update this cycle, in return. Essentially, this section is too long to go at the start of the next chapter, which is being worked on, and would lose its impact if it wasn't isolated. After discussion, therefore, it was decided that it would be better to release it now, to tide you over until the rest of the chapter came out. So enjoy._

* * *

**Chapter 17**

**I Shall Always Arise / 'I cannot cry, Wherefore thus sleepest thou?**

**EVANGELION**

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

_"We have obtained high-resolution Arcane Theory Field Structure (ATFS) spectra of the inactive modal state of a cross-lineage p-vector waveform, covering the r-bar states from -1 to 15, in an environment configured for pro-atavistic action. For the first half of our 1.7 ks examination, the ATFS was in a quiescent state, with negligible arcane-active atavistic states, after which its r-emission state increased noticeably, to values given within. The differential arcane states indicate the presence of ATFS-scale internal structure. From this data, a model for this method of alignment under such conditions was created, which models the two waveforms as (_n+im_) dimensional constructs, where _n_ and _m_ are variables based on the current r-state. A phase diagram was produced, and compared to empirical data; it is found to be within 2σ of predicated values. We therefore submit this model for external evaluation on a wider range of r-bar states." _

"A model for the alignment of cross-lineage p-vector aninaneural waveforms in pro-atavistic conditions"  
M. Makinami, C. Habegger, S. Site, Y. Ikari, T. O. Corru, and D. A. Usk, 2070, AnNeuBioJ-[cen], 12, 882, 101-131

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**3rd of March, 2078**

The battle lines were drawn. The very terrain had been divided up between the two sides, who, despite a brief period of peace, would always be drawn into inevitable conflict. They both had their own assets, but they both wanted more, and so despite the greater powers which would prefer a cessation of violence, war was inevitable. But one of them had taken their eyes off the goal, and so, predatory and hungry, the more powerful of the two sides now had an unbeatable advantage. They may have been rebuffed before. They may have had the greater powers move to intervene, to stop the reclamation of that which was rightfully theirs. But now it all came down to this, and there was no-one, and nothing that could stop them.

Shinji Ikari, chubby hands balled into fists, glared at the toy car in the hands of the red-blonde girl who shared the sandbox with him. It was white with blue stripes, and headlights that turned on when one squeezed the roof. And he _wanted_ it. Discarded clothes littered around him, he placed one foot in front of another, approaching the little girl, who was squatting down, dressed only in a food-stained top. She was committing the unforgiveable offense of holding a broken, babbling conversation between the car and a doll, and that could not stand. It was a car. Cars were meant to do driving. Not talking. And he wanted to make it jump off the pile of sand that he had scooped together.

Last time he had taken it from her, some giant adult had taken it from him, and given it back to the girl. And then they had said things at him in the Unhappy Voice with Telling Off Words. But he had looked around, and there were no adults to use the Unhappy Voice on him. Which meant that everything was going according to the scenario.

With deliberate force, he shoved the red-blonde girl over, face-first into the sand, and snatched the car from her hand, running away with his prize clutched in both hands even as the tears started. The loud, booming voices of adults sounded from somewhere out of sight, and he dropped down heavily onto his bottom. With care, he put the car on the ramp he had built, and started moving it back and forwards, churning up the sand and making a humming noise as he did so.

The consideration that maybe he should have paid more attention hit him at about the time that the screaming three year old, her sandy face red and tear-streaked, did.

The sight which greeted Kyoko Soryu and Gendo Ikari as they came running was as follows; one three-year old female child, wearing only her t-shirt, beating one three-year old male child, dressed only in a nappy, with her fists and screaming "Car!" at the top of her lungs. Which lasted right until he, using all two-and-a-half months of his superior age and slight advantage in bulk, shoved her hard, sending her sprawling over into the sand again, and picked up the aforementioned toy automobile, cradling it protectively.

Slowly, the little boy turned to face the two adults already scurrying over. From his still-sitting position, he toppled backwards, face screwed up, and clutching at his ribs. And then Shinji began to cry, in great lung-emptying sobs which seemed to speak of some great and profound misery.

Gendo sighed. "He's not going to make it as an actor," he muttered to Kyoko, stepping over the fence around the sandpit to recover his son. "Honestly, you take your eyes off them for a minute…"

Kyoko was already squatting over her sand-covered daughter, wrapping her arms around the small figure. "Come on, come on, Asuka," she sing-sang to her, hugging her tight. "Mama's here, and there's no need to cry, and there's also no need to take all your clothes off like that because we do need that nappy in case of accidents and I don't even know how you managed to get it off again, because, really, my baby, how do you do it?" She paused for breath, and continued to coo to the three-year old, relying more on tone of voice than words.

"I don't know how they do it," the man remarked, as he sorted through the clothes, separating out his son's stuff from the little girl's. "Shinji, I know you're putting it on. I saw you push her over, and you were fine until I…" Gendo exhaled, "… I don't know why I try to be rational," he sighed, bending down to hug his son. "Despite the fact I know he's putting it on, he keeps on pretending to be upset until he gets it."

"So you're the softy," Kyoko said with a grin, scooping the little girl up. "Come on, Asuka, you're high up and no-one's going to push you over and really, please, please stop crying. Please. Please." She started to rock her against her shoulder. "It's okay, please, stop crying, please, it's okay, okay?"

"Small children are brutes," the clean-shaven man said, as he tried to pull the dark-coloured t-shirt back over Shinji's head. "Really, I can't wait until he grows up and becomes more rational and less likely to throw tantrums as soon as we catch him doing anything naughty. Personally, I track parenthood by how far away we get from the first six months. Nothing can be as bad as those six months." He groaned. "I really need Yui for this sort of thing," he admitted. "He just doesn't seem to get that other people are allowed to have toys that he wants."

"Shh shh, shh shh," Kyoko said. "Mmm. Yes. And," she looked at her daughter, who was clinging onto her mother's shoulder, and shaking, "yes, Asuka's sensitive. I've tried to see if I can get her into a proper nursery, but she just keeps crying if I leave her alone. I hate to think what it'll be like when she starts school properly." The woman grinned. "Actually, I have to thank you for how understanding you've been as Project Supervisor."

Gendo produced a handkerchief from a pocket, and shook his head, his gaze drifting over to the window. "I don't care where you get it done," he said, bluntly, "just as long as it's done." A faint smile crept onto his lips. "Of course, I'd be less appreciative if you were doing things that needed labtime, rather than just the MAGI." Dabbing at Shinji's face, his jaw tightened as he tried to deal with the flailing hands. "Shinji, stop fighting me... if..." he let out a long, slow breath. "Fine. You know what? I'm not going to dry your tears. It's entirely your fault. You're fine."

Kyoko checked her watch. "Actually, it's getting close to one of her snack times. Maybe he has low blood sugar, too."

"No, it's because he's a little brute who's found that by throwing a tantrum, he gets his own way," Gendo muttered. "So what you're going to do, young man, is say sorry to little Asuka for pushing her over."

Hands suddenly going to chubby fists, Shinji shook his head, with a loud "No!"

"Oh, yes you are."

"No!"

Kyoko stooped down to grab the discarded clothes which belonged to her daughter. "I just need to get her dressed again, before she has an accident in the sandbox," she said, manhandling the girl with her out of the sandbox, to lay her down on a chair. "Seriously, Asuka, please make this easy for us, and then we can go have food. Om nom nom nice biskies, yes?"

"Food time?"

"Mmm hmm," her mother said, to a giggle from the little girl. "Now, come on. Just lift your legs up like this, and we can get the nappy back on... maybe we can get you wearing a dress instead, if you're going to be like this with shorts. Yes, yes, we've only got a bit of time over in Tokyo-3, and then we've got to go back into the whoosh-plane and go back home, and you've been _very_ good even if people have been mean to you and that's why Uncle Cal is going to be looking after you this afternoon while Mama has to go to a review board and you always like Uncle Cal, don't you? You got to sit next to him on the plane, and you were very well behaved and hardly cried at all and that nasty woman was very, very mean for complaining about you... she should try having children, shouldn't she?" The little girl nodded enthusiastically, just at the tone of voice, as her mother resealed the nappy. "Good, good, now just keep on being good while I get the shorts back on and then we can go get nice-nice yum-yums, yes?" She shuffled her daughter along the seats as the little girl squirmed, trying to fasten up the top of the shorts. "And then maybe some time I'll find out how you manage to get these things off so quickly," she added, as Gendo approached her from behind.

The man cleared his throat. "I think Shinji has something to say to you, Asuka," he said, holding his son's hand in that very certain way which, as a parent, made it quite clear that what he had just said was not, in any way, a suggestion, and disobedience would result in trouble. "Go ahead."

"'rry."

"What are you sorry for?" Gendo prompted.

"'rry for pushi'," the little boy muttered sullenly.

"I didn't hear you. You're muttering."

"Sorry for pushing!" Shinji grumped, trying to squirm away from his father's hand; his face screwed up and reddened. The little boy was leaving a trail of sand behind him, from his pockets.

Kyoko pulled her daughter onto her knee. "Wouldn't it be nice to be nice?" she suggested, a faintly optimistic note in her voice. The little girl, instead, preferred to try to turn around, and burrow her face in her mother's jumper. "Oh dear," the woman said, shaking her head. "Oh well. Maybe she'll be more talkative after some food. She's normally such a little chatterbox." Staggering slightly, she got up. "And they get so big so quickly."

"Yes," Gendo replied, biting a lip. "Hmm, Yui gets out of the talk with the ANB board in about half an hour. If we leave them with her, that means we can go over your implementation of the Banneru-Anabupoli procedure together. I've got some doubts over your approximations, and whether they'll be valid under the ATFS-model that Akagi predicts. Miyakame has his doubts, too, with how it'll harmonise with the design for the new SQUIDs." As he spoke, he began to head down the corridor, holding his son's hand, the little boy taking two steps for every one of his.

"I already told you," Kyoko said, slightly wearily, bouncing her daughter onto her other hip. "We can use the flat approximation when at these low field intensities... Gendo, slow down. Look, let's just get them fed, and then we can do this properly."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**16th of October, 2091**

Asuka Langley Soryu breathed a sigh of relief as she yanked the hatch closed, screwed it tight and pulled the lever beside it. There was a hiss as the entry plug sealed, and began to flood with LCL. The noise outside was terrible, the shriek of foundations warping, and the walls were coming apart. In the Eva bay, the main power was entirely out, and their dash to the packed-for-transport Unit had been through red emergency lighting that left far too much to the imagination. The pair of them had been drenched when the sprinkler system had burst, spraying chill fluid over the two teenagers, and it was only now that she had enough time to realise that her dress had turned partially transparent. It was stupid, she knew, to think about that when something seemed to be bringing down the building on top of them, but she was now very, very glad that she had worn white underwear today, rather than black.

"Your LCL tastes funny," Shinji accused her, gagging, and she sighed. Honestly, was she meant to babysit the Third Child or something? A completely untrained, useless, complaining boy who nevertheless had the sole redeeming feature that he had a freakishly high synch ratio? And his Eva was in L2, an ocean away.

She had to admit, this seemed about normal. They had moved her to Chicago-2 right before Harbinger-5 had shown up; of course they wouldn't have two Evas around when Harbinger-6 arrived. She grinned, a small smirk which she held even as the old drowning reflexes protested that _LCL was not meant to go into the lungs_, exhaled, and drew in a deep breath. "Well, of _course_," she drawled through the fluid. "You're new and completely untrained. Pilots have a specially tailored, unique cocktail of LCL, appropriate for their individual metabolisms," the girl recited. "If mine tastes different to yours, then maybe it's because this is my Eva! Not yours!"

"... wait. This is a specially tailored one for a g... for you, and..."

"Oh, I'm sure you'll be fine," Asuka said, heartlessly, shifting on her seat, hair drifting around her face like strange seaweed. "Gehirn, begin start-up process," she added, as the plug walls lit up in red, a complex networks of LAIs waking from the sleep of inactivity. In the neutral buoyancy of the LCL, she kicked up, and drifted over to a panel in the wall of the plug, pulling it open to recover an emergency replacement plug suit. It was tossed at Shinji, who didn't see it coming, and so was hit in the face.

"Ow!"

Asuka sighed again, drifting back down. "Let's get some rules straight!" she ordered, glaring at the boy, as she grabbed her red carry-bag with her spare hand. "Okay? Firstly, my Eva, my rules. You're here because if you get killed if the building collapses, that makes your Eva useless until they find a replacement pilot. You are not the pilot, and trying to do things without _my_ permission is not okay. In fact... you're probably used to the Test Model, not the Production Model, so... so don't touch anything unless I tell you to! This is a true Evangelion, the first on Earth to be built for dedicated combat rather than just some test-bed for experimental technology!" She kept her eyes on him; the boy looked rather greenish, insofar as anyone could look green in inactivated LCL. "It won't just synchronise with anyone untrained, like how your Unit 01 did!"

"No, we wouldn't want that in our war machines," Shinji said, rolling his eyes, an expression which would have come across better had he not been flinching slightly, and looking sick. "It feels... warmer... in here," he added, thoughtfully.

Asuka nodded. He was right there, she thought, deliberately choosing to ignore his other comment. "Almost certainly due to the warding," she guessed, no sign of her uncertainty showing. "Clearly something's going on, which... yes!" she exclaimed. The girl thumped one hand against the side of the plug. "Listen! You're going to put on that emergency plug suit, so you don't break your neck or anything. And I'm going," she hefted the spare bag, which she always kept stashed under the seat of her Unit, in every plug she used, "to put on my proper one." She leaned in close, grabbing his shirt collar. "You go up the top end of the plug, and I'll be down the bottom. And if you look, I'll make you _pay_."

Shinji, for his own part, wisely declined to comment that she had already flashed her knickers at him when she had been floating around in the LCL, and that certain parts of her clothing were already turning rather transparent. The entopics on his own t-shirt were doing rather odd things, and appeared to have shorted out in the orange fluid, the moving images breaking apart into pixelated blocks of colour, which left the garment below clear. Taking the packaged plug suit, he clambered over the back of the seat, and quite deliberately turned around, in a way which made sure that the glaring girl could see that he wasn't looking.

Two problems immediately presented themselves. Firstly, this plug suit – which was lighter than his own, a simple white garment which looked like one of Rei's and which was only kept in the Eva for emergencies, like if the primary was damaged – was made for someone slightly taller than him. And secondly, it was made for someone who was, not to put it too lightly, female. And thus, anatomically, exhibited certain examples of anthropic sexual dimorphism. As he stripped off his trousers, trying not to think of the – attractive, abrasive, annoying – girl also changing behind him, that's when she started talking.

"Gehirn?" she said, and he half-turned, before remembering that that was the name of the LITAN of this Unit, just as Unit 01's one was called Nerv.

[Start up is 75% complete, Test Pilot. Waiting for response from central control. Standby.]

"Override. Independent start-up mode." She paused. "Override safety protocols about another person in the plug."

"Safety protocols?" Shinji protested, pausing for a moment, even as his trousers floated upwards. "You didn't say anything about safety protocols." He was not going to turn to look her in the eye, he was not going to turn to look her in the eye.

"Well, what did you think?" Asuka snapped back, her own back also turned and both hands still going down protectively to hold her dress down. With her head, she tried to nudge the free-floating knickers down into the bag, cursing her own rush for not stowing them properly. "Until you came along, there's only been two Eva pilots for years, and I've never even met the First Child! But unless you want to go outside and be crushed by falling debris, then... shut up!"

"But..."

"Just don't put the SQUIDs on, and you'll be fine!" Asuka ordered, sticking both legs into the top of the plug suit, before muttering a curse to herself and peeling LCL-soaked socks from flat against her skin.

Shinji muttered his own complaints, as he tried to work the plug suit up, the currents of LCL thick and swirling. "So what's going on?" he asked, to distract himself.

"Gehirn, have you got a connection to ChicagoCom yet?" Asuka asked the LITAN, on his behalf, unfastening her bra and pulling the plug suit up to her shoulders with a sigh of relief. The floating garments around her were stuffed into her bag with extreme prejudice.

[No, Test Pilot. **ALERT!** Networks are in full lock-down mode. ChicagoCom is bouncing all requests from non-military authorities. Evangelion Unit 02 is not currently registered as a military asset. **WARNING!** Pattern Blue detected on Unit's external sensors. **WARNING!**Code Red emergency on civilian networks. Extrapolation; extra-normal entity of Harbinger classification probable.]

"A Harbinger," the two Children said together.

"... well looks like this is my chance," Asuka muttered to herself, before pumping her fist. "Right, you d... gagh!" she exclaimed, hastily turning back around.

"What happened to not turning around!" Shinji protested, trying to work his leg down the unfamiliar proportions of his plug suit.

"I can't believe you're taking this long!" she retorted. "And you were facing me too! Staring, with a stupid perverted look on your face!"

"No I wasn't! I was just trying to get this on and sort of floated," Shinji claimed, to something which would have been a glare from the girl had she not remembered that she wasn't meant to be looking half-way through, and hastily turned around. "It's hard work! It doesn't fit, and..."

"Oh, you can't expect me to believe that you've never practiced in-plug changing!" Asuka snapped, before she tilted her head slightly. "Okay," she relented, folding her arms, "yes, you are almost completely untrained. So tell me when you're done... which had better be done soon! I need access to the controls! Gehirn, see if you can get access to anything military so we can see properly what is going on."

[Yes, Test Pilot. ArcSec networks report widespread flooding from unidentified substance. Surface temperature of Chicago-2 is anomalous; 90K plus or minus 10K. Optical feed acquired. Relaying to main screen.]

The plug wall lit up, displaying a camera feed blurred by the thick ice that covered the lens of the screen. Through this veil, the world was lit in orange, which seemed to pulse and shift in waves of crackling shimmers of varicoloured light. There was none of the weapons fire, none of the crack of charge beams and roar of plasma weapons that there should have been, and that alone was terrifying.

[Analysis of wavelengths indicates that there are anomalous levels of various chain hydro-23-carb-23-ons in the atmosphere. Cross-sourcing camera feeds. Confirmed. Displaying ratios. The r-state mean is twenty-three, showing expected breakdown rates. Local r-state remains equal to unity. Altering LCL mix to compensate for possible exotic state exposure. Harbinger not located.]

"Get changed!" Asuka snapped, turning around to grab the controls.

"I'm done! Just need to..." the boy pressed the button on his wrist, and winced, as the suit suddenly contracted in a way which was not quite appropriate for the male physique. "This... ow. Tight!"

"Good!" She pulled herself back into the plug seat. "Sit right behind me, don't touch anything, don't even _think _like you're piloting an Eva! And hold onto the seat, not me! I don't want any distractions! Gehirn, prepare for launch!"

[Launch sequence initialised. **WARNING! **Evangelion is locked down for transport. Beginning override lockdown, under emergency protocols.]

Shinji let out a sudden breath. "Misato! Toja and Kensuke are out there and..."

"I said don't think!" the girl snapped at him, checking the position of the clips in her hair, before pulling her cowl up, which locked. A second stage unfolded to cover her eyes, leaving only a semi-circle of face exposed, and concealed the sudden, too-old expression that flashed across her face, the pain in her eyes. In that eyeless, thick plug suit, she looked somewhat like some kind of alien insect, only the pale flesh distinguishing her from some automata. "I... I know that Uncle Cal might be up in that, and... Gehirn!"

[We are ready, Test Pilot,] Gehirn intruded, the four lights of the ARvatar retreating out of sight after that announcement.

Asuka grinned, a predatory pale crescent-moon of teeth flashing beneath her covered eyes. "Right. Third Child, hold on tight. And try not to break your neck." A practiced thumb motion flicked the covers on the control yokes open. "Gehirn, begin lock release process."

"Ha. Ha," Shinji said, trying to suppress the squirming feeling in his gut.

"I'm glad you found it amusing, Third," Asuka smirked despite her worry, fingers twitching as she opened a communications channel. "Gehirn, broadcast this. NEG-Chicago, this is Evangelion Unit 02. I will be deploying to engage the Harbinger. Gehirn will handle communications synch." After a moment's pause, a new cascade of lights opened up on the left hand side of the plug, and Shinji boggled slightly at the complexity of the command array. His one was basically just used for communications with the Geocity, and, now, with Rei in the tiny amount of practice they'd done together.

"You're not holding on tight enough," Asuka reminded him. "Right! Gehirn, locks?"

[Locks are released. Status report indicates that tracks are operational. Autonomous emergency A-Pod flight mode engaged in case of derailment. Unit is ready.]

The girl flexed her fingers, one last time, and deliberately rested them on the control yokes.

"Evangelion Unit 02, launch!"

* * *

~'/|\'~


	19. Chapter 18: Dancing Over A Freezing Sea

**Chapter 18**

**Dancing Over A Freezing Sea / 'For Heaven is parted from thee, and the Earth 'Knows thee not**

**EVANGELION**

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"_Das sind mir unbekannte Blumen."  
"Ja. Sie sind mir auch unbekannt."  
"Schneiden wir sie ab?"  
"Ja. Schneiden wir sie ab!"  
"Die Rosen schenken wir unsrer Königin."  
"Aber unsere Königin fehlt."  
"Ja, wir sind in ihrer Abwesenheit zu weinen."  
"Wir schneiden ihnen die Augen aus, und wir können weben ihr eine Krone."  
"Ja, wir weben ihr eine Krone."  
"Wir können das tun."  
"Wir werden das tun." _

Graffiti found carved into the inner dome of the Berlin-2 Geocity, two days before the Berlin-2 Atrocity  
Original author(s) unknown

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The frozen chute cover, drowned beneath the oncoming unwaters, shattered open. And from the depths, Unit 02 emerged into the new ocean of otherworldy chemicals, which surged down to fill the empty space from which whence it had come. The heat off the Unit boiled the freezing hydrocarbons around it, which exploded in a sudden shift of pressure, before Asuka gritted her teeth, and an unseen AT-Field rammed the fluid away from her hull, which gleamed with ice from the moisture in the air of the launch bay, frozen like steel to the outer layer.

"What the hell?" Shinji whispered, looking around. Warning messages were cascading over the wall of the plug, but beyond them, everything was dim and orange. Bubbles roiled constantly upwards through the murky fluid, from around the Evangelion, and beyond them, the boy could vaguely see the dark shapes of the spires and other buildings of Chicago-2, flooded in this alien sea.

"Quiet!" Asuka ordered, her jaw clenched. "Gehirn! Heat management!"

The LITAN responded, as Unit 02 rose slowly through the chaotic fluid, inside a spherical bubble of vacuum edged by the gleam of an AT-Field. [Armour heating elements set to maximum. **WARNING!** Failure in multiple non-vital systems.] There was a pause. [Authorisation required to override heat management systems to deactivate D-Sinks,] the emotionless voice of the AI stated.

"Authorise, authorised," Asuka barked, barely breathing

[Acknowledged. **WARNING!** Rapid change in ambient temperature may cause critical damage to Unit 02's D-Engines due to deactivation of cooling systems.]

"Okay!" the girl snapped, eyes flickering over the red streaks that appeared over the image of the Unit in her Eyes, and letting the AT-Field weaken. The incoming fluid flash-boiled into noxious orange clouds that hissed when they touched the now-glowing elements in the Evangelion's hull, but the pilot relaxed slightly, the slight strain in the visible parts of her face a sign that she was still working hard. "Gerhin," she said, pulling back on the control yokes as the Evangelion slowly ascended, "location of Harbinger?"

[Uncertain. Fluid is radar opaque. Localised POLLEN and Pattern Blue indicate proximity estimated to be less than ten klicks.]

Shinji glanced around, swivelling his head while trying not to twist the female-tailored suit, which led to painful consequences. He wouldn't have put visibility at more than one hundred metres, a conclusion borne out by the rangefinder, which was tagging the murky outlines of buildings beneath the Unit... buildings which had been full of people. The boy gagged, swallowing LCL, and for once was thankful for the vile taste. It washed away the taste of... the cold, the shuddering fear. "D-do you have any c-contact with Misato or anyone?" he stuttered out.

"No," the girl sitting in front of him said, leaning backwards slightly as the Unit rose higher, her warm body against his front. He was shaking, and, he realised, after a moment of contact, so was she. "Nothing." Gritting her teeth again, the hollow of vapour around the Evangelion bulged, becoming more angular, as the convection of the heat flowing off it stirred the orange fog into motion. There were strange colours out there, colours that should not be, and flashes of light in the distance. Lighting arced in this alien sea, as exotic r-states decayed, and particles nearly unknown to Earth gleamed like evanescent starts before decaying again. All around, there was noise, although the autocensors removed most of it. What sounded like the rush of waters was overlaid by crackles, pops, and somewhere out there, a deep, resonance keening that sounded in the gut.

"What was that?" Shinji asked, hastily.

"Shh!" Asuka ordered, rather than answer. "Gehirn! Identify!"

[No match found, Test Pilot. Attempting to locate source. **WARNING!** Exotic properties of 23-state matter are not fully understood. LITAN-sourced analysis may be unreliable.]

The noise sounded again, longer, as the un-coloured glow grew brighter, the underwater lightning of strange particles beyond the comprehension of men of science licking out in the fog. A great belching uprising of bubbles marked the freezing sea's rush into a subterranean area, and the flash-boiling of the first elements which hit the warmer section punctured further sealed areas, the pressure explosion shaking the world, sending the flakes of frozen carbon dioxide that sank down from the surface whirling in white flurries.

Inexorably, slowed by the viscous fluid, one of the diamond spires of Chicago-2 fell, shattering the connecting bridge which rained down like sliver-glass blades in the cold, oozing clear traces of liquid atmosphere Lit by an uncolour-halo of exotic particles, it sunk into the noxious orange-brown fluid. The Evangelion was forced down as a twenty metre section swung towards it, ducking under the slowly falling debris, before Asuka increased the thrust, narrowly skirting around the falling skyscraper, streaming an opaque cloud of flash-boiled bubbles behind her.

"Sensors improve when I'm moving," she noted, to herself, head flicking from left to right almost mechanically, at the extrapolated wireframes of buildings taken from the city maps which were all that she had to navigate by in this poor visibility.

[Altering LCL mix to account for 23-state decay,] Gehirn commented, impassively.

Eyes wide, Shinji watched in horror as the Unit passed close to the falling spire, close enough that he could see the cascade of the alien sea flooding the now-broken building, washing into areas where the atmosphere was liquefied, and there were small, shattered ants within those lost areas. "In the building..." he began.

"Shut up! I can see!" she snapped at him, a warm presence pressed against his body that shook just as he did, despite her mannerisms. "Just... close your eyes!"

But despite that, Shinji could not. There was a sick horror about this murky environment, lit by flashes of exotic radiation, a morbid attraction by the terrors of the deaths of millions in a sudden cold which killed so fast that there could be no pain. And that reminded him that the only thing separating himself from out there was the Evangelion, and the weak AT-Field the girl was holding up. And then there was another keening, a world-whale song, and the bubbles around them danced again.

Asuka screamed and the Evangelion whirled, a sudden white radiance coming from both arms as she engaged her plasmathrowers which blossomed in a horrific steam explosion as they left the bubble of vapour. That, perhaps, was what saved them, as the Unit suddenly was forced backwards, the broken glimmering of an alien AT-Field slamming forwards into the cutting beams, wreathed in the flare of exotic matter. In the clash, the Evangelion came off worse, and was sent flying backwards through the noxious fluid, the boiling of its passage enough to obscure the threat.

With a shattering crash, it hit another spire, warning icons flashing red in the cockpit as it punched halfway in, embedding itself in the tower, which, too, began to fall. There was a moment of clarity, as the frozen atmosphere in the spire subliminated, the red-hot elements in the Eva bringing warmth, before, suited knuckles white around the control yokes, Asuka forced herself back into motion, the kick of the A-Pods felt in the plug as she tried to surface as fast as possible.

And up above was a hell no less severe, though different, from the depths below.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

It was raining. Immaculately clear droplets fell from the sky, cascading down in their multitudes, to splash against the alien freezing sea. And around them, white flakes fell, drifting down slowly compared to the rain, but still present, to sink or settle on the surface of the intruding fluid.

In the chill city of Chicago-2, the atmosphere of Earth rained down from the sky.

In mid-air it condensed, to fall and rise, boiling and bubbling and hissing. The gleaming spires were frozen over; their adamant beauty only made more so by the iron-hard filigrees of water ice that enveloped them. The 23-state hydrocarbons smeared them in oils that gave them an iridescent, shimmering beauty; a beauty only made more wonderful by the arcing radiance of exotic radiations, that painted uncolours across all reflective surfaces and lit things of this earth in a halo of discharges. The mists of condensing atmosphere and boiling sea alike swirled in white and orange, wrapping the spires in fog, until the occasional burst of light would break the veil for a moment, to reveal the wondrous sight before the vapours would move in, like a mourning shroud tossed about by the hurricane-force winds that were called in to this tremendous region of low pressure. In the intense heat of the discharges, the alien hydrocarbons would ignite in the atmosphere of Earth, and great blossoms of flame burned in the distance, before being extinguished again by the all-consuming cold

The frozen mannequin figures in the upper layers of the spires, every cell in their bodies fatally burst in the sudden cold, had a wake of transcendental beauty and elegance.

From the ochre ocean, emerged Unit 02. And in the suddenly aerobic environment, the vapours of exotic chemicals around it ignited as it dumped waste heat. Fiery trail following it, the Evangelion ascended, upwards, through the atmospheric rain. And within the plug, there were two swallowed gasps as both Children saw, properly, what dominated the sky, what warped and distended it, so what of the world around them that could be seen curled up like a dish.

The sky was deep, dark orange, blotting out the sun. In the shadow, the fires and arcane energies were enough to bring the world to daylight brightness, but it was a strange lighting, which was sucked up at by the sky. And rain poured down from above, though this resembled rain in the same way that a puddle is a sea. Rivulets of alien waters enveloped spires, wreathed in their r-state altered light, and fountains fell in droplets the size of tanks which bubbled and boiled as they entered the still-warmer frozen city. Even as they fell, the heated air of Earth escaped, rising along the pressure gradient, only to burn and flare in mini-novas in the sky.

The occasional crack and blue-green aftertrail of New Earth Government charge beams could be seen, in the distance, but they were broken and disjointed, almost at random. And above... there were other things. World-whales, monstrous mantas that circled in the alien sky only to fall, dying and shrieking in the, to-them, horrific heat.

[Spacetime curvature deviates from flat,] the LITAN stated, unnecessarily. [Attempting to recalculate targeting systems. Deploying autonomous systems. **WARNING!** External temperature is below operational range for drones. Data must be collected through path-local mapping. **ALERT!** Situation is POLLEN-positive. Adjusting LCL mix.]

"Gehirn! Transmission on open frequencies! This is Evangelion Unit 02," Asuka shouted, gaining in height in an attempt to fight the hellish air-currents that threatened to slam her into buildings and that toxic ocean which had flooded Chicago-2. "Is anyone still out there? I have the Third Child with me? Anyone at all! Keep checking," she snarled at her LITAN, even as lips pursed, she projected an invisible, single-wing of an AT-Field, holding herself in level flight.

Shinji was already hyperventilating. "Oh no," he muttered to himself. "No, no, no. This... this feels like what Mot did." He sucked in a breath of LCL. "It's just going to shoot us from surprise, I just know it, and we can't even see properly in this fog and what's up with the sky and it could be anywhere and there's something underwater and I don't think it's water and..."

"Just talk about the Mot stuff!" Asuka shouted back, her temper snapping. "What thing did Harbinger-5 do?"

"Shot me from... like, the horizon. It hurt. A lot." Shinji swallowed. "Misato... she said that it could track the something about D-Engines and stuff like that. I ended up clinically dead for some time, apparently," he added, before yelping as Asuka threw the Eva into a suddenly erratic path, ducking and weaving as, with a series of barked orders, she had her LITAN introduce a random component to the Unit's flight paths through the control over the A-Pods.

"What are you doing?" he demanded, gripping onto the seat as hard as he could, feeling the dampened force of the accelerations through the strange-tasting LCL.

"Evasive manoeuvres. Idiot," she answered back, leaning back into him as the Unit rose steeply, arms held tight in against its body, a brittle calm in her voice.

"Against what? Mot used the D-Engines and stuff as how it saw. And dodging and stuff didn't help, unless you did what they had Rei do, and turn off all her engines and use external power."

Her mouth wrinkled. "I knew that," she retorted, pulling the Unit in to cling to a spire, the hands of the Evangelion crushing diamond and ice alike in its grip. Embracing the skyscraper as they were, Shinji didn't look too closely at the obscured windows pressed up against the Evangelion's eyes. His imagination was already doing enough to fill in what he couldn't see, the frozen, dead remnants of a city that he had been in mere hours ago. "That should disguise us, yes?"

"I don't know!" he blurted out.

"... that was a rhetorical question!" was the response he got. "Gehirn? Anything? Any targets? Where's the Harbinger?"

[In order. The tactical command net is down. TITAN coordination assistance is not available. No active priority command channels detected. No objectives have been received. The location of provisional Harbinger-6 is as yet unknown. Scanning in prog...]

"Asuka!" The voice was crackly, broken by static and a strange humming pulse that beat, slowly, in the background, but recognisably Misato. "Is that you?"

"Major Katsuragi!" the girl responded, with a slight relaxation that only Shinji, sitting behind her as he was, could have felt from her shift in posture. "We're..."

"You say you have the Third Child with you?" the Major interrupted.

"Yes," Shinji said, relief in his voice. "Misato, have you heard anything from T..."

"What's going on?" Asuka said, at the same time. "Feeds! What have you got? I'm operating almost blind in here, and most of the ambient network is down! I'll take anything!"

"Well..." the Major began. "It's a mess..."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The dark haired woman leant forwards, down the command bunker in the testing grounds. "We're trying to patch things together here," she said, bluntly. "The combat grid is shredded. We're relaying what we have now." She paused, and took a breath. Misato added, "And I'm glad to hear from you both." She glanced up at Ritsuko. "Is it done?"

"Almost," the blonde replied, her overdress already draped across the back of her chair, down in this bunker. "Okay... yes! We have authorisation for total control of the NA-Relay-4. They're beginning purge of current throughput, and priority synch with EU-Relay-2 is..." The woman hissed in irritation. "Obstructionist little... 350 seconds and counting."

"We don't have that long!" Major Katsuragi yelled. "CRONOS isn't responding, and we need MAGI-level processing to handle this!"

"I know!" Ritsuko shouted back, taking a breath, knuckles whitening. "I know," she repeated, more softly. "Right." She whirled on the disparate technical staff of various projects, and the equipment which was more suited for running detailed analysis of combat units in testing than for handling a major extranormal excursion. "Get everything still operational linked together. We're going to need to steal processing power from everywhere to start Ricci-Yi tensor analysis until we get the Relay up and get the L2 MAGI hooked in. Well, what are you waiting for! Get on it!"

"... why are you telling us what to do?" a hard-faced uniformed Nazzadi woman asked, with a slight sneer. "This is a combat operation, and you're a civilian. Who are you, anyway?"

"Dr Ristuko Akagi, Director of Science for the Evangelion Group," the blonde snapped acidly. "And given that you," she stared at the other woman, harcontacts glowing blue as she scan-read her tags, "... well, it's not like there are actually any Navy units active at the moment, so I think the fact that we're the people who killed the last three Harbingers means we're rather better suited for this than you! Don't you?"

Major Katsuragi was not involved in the little tussle for authority. The Army's side of things had already fallen into the assumption that, while, as a Major – albeit one earmarked for Lieutenant Colonel – she was heavily outranked, she also importantly knew what she was doing with the Evangelion. Hence, her objectives had been set by the superior officers, who were discretely watching her, even as they tried to get contact with any surviving elements in the city and move in forces from all around. The Navy, meanwhile, had postponed any jostling until they actually had operational units in the area.

"Major! Where's my calcs!" Asuka demanded, her voice crackly and high-compression. "Gehirn doesn't have valid solutions for my a-mags, and my drones can't be launched in this cold! Visibility in this place is terrible, and my FSEM isn't working!"

There was muttering from around the room, the mumbling of other, senior military figures. "How _old_ is that pilot?" could distinctly be heard, before the _nazzada _speaker was hushed.

"Asuka," the Major said, leaning forwards, "can you withdraw out of the affected area?" The woman's eyes flicked up to the incomplete telemetry being fed from Unit 02, noting the regions of damage, flashing red, and the static-garbled camera feeds. Through indirect eyes, she watched at the image jerked from position to position, orange and white fog punctured by the glowing backscatter as Asuka tried to use her anti-personal lasers to map out the area around her.

"I..." the girl began, before there was a grunt of pain, and the image went tumbling, before cutting out entirely.

Her hands balled themselves into fists, in the fabric of her overdress. "Asuka! Respond!" the dark-haired woman yelled. "Get contact back," she ordered the soldier manning the communications desk, before turning on her heel. "Do we have any other assets at _all_?" she, a major, demanded of the colonels and naval captains in the room.

"Army Air units are scrambling," a thin-faced brigadier said, her normally olive-coloured skin grey. "And tactical nuclear weapons have been authorised, both chromatic and conventional."

There was an annoyed noise from the man next to her. "Meaningless. We don't have any targets. And," he added, "... that data from in the city? CHRONOS, verify that..." he swore, "damn, the TITAN's offline. I was going to see if things would work that cold."

"Major Katsuragi," Asuka's voice crackled back into life. "It got the building I was on, and..."

"It's after us!" Shinji interjected.

"Shut up! Whatever that water stuff is, it's high r-state, cold..." a grunt, and twist, "and breaks comms. I'm keeping away from it, but I'm blind out here without that link-up!"

"Keep on evading it," the Major ordered. "Rits?"

"In progress!" the blonde snapped back.

"Well, keep at..."

"Major." Tokita's dark face was much like the ghost at the banquet to Misato, and she choked back badly mispronounced Chinese profanity, satisfying herself with a glare at the man. He continued unabashed, "DAHACA can operate in such environments. We pulled her back when the warning sounded, but..."

"Well, why didn't you say this earlier!" the dark-haired woman snapped, before taking a breath. "And... at both these temperatures and r-states?" she added, more calmly, but extreme scepticism in her voice.

Tokita let out a small smirk, despite the stress. "Project Daeva didn't design our units so the pilot would drop dead at the first sign of an r-state shift, you know," he remarked. "That's one of the reasons for the high-grade enhancement of the pilot."

Misato's face twisted so her eyes were narrowed and her mouth a thin line, before the Major caught herself. "Oh?" she asked, simply.

The man leant forwards, towards the microphone. "Krishima?" he said. "Are you ready?"

[Yes, sir,] came the mechanical voice of DAHACA.

The _nazzada _inclined his head. "We would, of course, place control of this unit under local field command," he added, in a voice almost as oily as the alien sea outside. "This is _not _the time for petty divisions and arguments over jurisdiction, especially considering the dire circumstances."

[Acknowledged,] the voice of the AI automaton stated. [Briefing Lieutenant Krishima, and preparing for reactivation and launch from secure hangar.] It paused. [What are this unit's orders?] it stated, quite deliberately.

Misato paused, and swallowed. "Lieutenant," she said, eyes narrowed.

"Major?" the young woman replied, a slightly inappropriately cheerful note in her voice.

"You are to support Evangelion Unit 02, with..." she glanced at the project's chief engineer, "ranged support and serving as a relay point."

[Understood.]

The dark-haired woman nodded. "You heard that, Asuka?" she asked.

"Yes. Navy support, data-link, it better not shoot me," the girl snapped, her attention clearly elsewhere from the noises in the background. "I'm going to try to get higher, but it's... right after me!"

The Major clutched the microphone with whitened knuckles, and silently bemoaned the fact that she couldn't use her Ashcroft-fitted implants here. "Then," she told Tokita, "what are you waiting for! Get your thing in there!"

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Body unmoving, unbreathing, pulseless, the mind of Mana Krishima dwelt on its blank plain, ensnared in the coils of DAHACA. The representation of the iron dragon ensnared her, surrounded her digital avatar with the sussurating whispers of its data flows and information statuses, sparks of light drifting in the gaps between its dark grey scales.

[The data from designate 'Evangelion Unit 02' has been synchronised with my sensors,] it stated, in its cold, dead, flat voice. [I am in irregular communication with designate 'LITAN-Gehirn'. Tactical cross-link is set up.]

"Boot up external cameras," the woman ordered, the hanging information appearing in the air around her before she had even started speaking. In the control plug, her form twitched slightly, despite the fact that her brain was de-linked from her vat-grown, enhanced body, as anti-zonal drugs were pumped into her.

And so she gazed upon the incursion, and what remained of Chicago-2. There was not much to see. The clouds of condensing air and boiling fluids were a seething, chaotic mess, pale dissonant orange lit from within by a brighter orange glow that filled the sky in the contaminated area. Flashes of _something _flicked and bloomed within it, refracted and smeared by the clouds, but nothing could be seen from within.

Light didn't move right. The clouds didn't move right. Nothing was quite right.

[Ready?] DAHACA asked, a hint of anticipation in its mechanically-inhuman voice.

"Oh, of course," the woman's avatar smiled. "Dahaca, launch escort drones, maintain link to local communications hub, begin probing with testing lasers. Let's go!"

[Yes, my pilot.]

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

AT-Field wrapped around it in a delta-shaped cloak, Unit 02 tore through the freezing air. Behind it, the brute force of its impact forced condensation of liquid atmosphere, which fell as rain whipped by the terrible gale of its passage. And behind that was Harbinger-6, maw questing, hungry, inescapable.

Asuka jinked hard to the left, the edge of her AT-Field "wing" clipping an ice-bound spire and tearing clean through, whiteness falling down into the toxic ocean which flooded the city. The Harbinger smashed right through with inexorable force, straight into the radiance of the plasma from the forearms of the Evangelion. Spiderweb cracks on the diamond skyscraper under her feet spread as the terrible heat sublimed the air snowing down, smashing into the flesh of the monstrosity, which let out a screech like fingernails on wineglasses, and twisted aside to avoid the pain. The biped spun and kicked off the building, irregular charges firing from the launchers close to the radiators, only for too many of the shells to fail in these alien conditions.

German swearing resounded in the entry plug.

[Core location has not been ascertained,] Gehirn stated impassively. [Probability indicates it is internal.]

A muttered curse suggested that the Test Pilot was quite aware that she did not know where the core was, and did not need her LITAN to point that out.

Out from the orange-lit fog, the Harbinger came, the falling rain dancing in its scream. In appearance, it was not unlike a fish, though it was more kin to the bloated creatures of the deep ocean than it was to any creature that might appear upon the plates of men. But its flesh was pale, a crated lunar regolith that could only come from extreme antiquity or violence – unless those jagged scars were but a natural part of its loathsome appearance – and gleamed, reflecting blue and purple in this all-consuming orange light. When it was veiled by the fog, it was a lurking shadow, something smeared and hard to see by radar or light alike; when it came screaming out of the dark – as it did now – it was fast despite its bulk, a maw of needled teeth questing, twitching.

Its impact bowled into Unit 02, a twist from the Evangelion barely enough to prevent those hungry teeth from snatching the mecha up. The war machine went flying back, tumbling through the air and smashing through one of the capillaries which connected two spires together, flensing paint from the ice-encrusted surface. The splash as it hit the alien ocean below coated the buildings around it.

Liquid oxygen and strange hydrocarbons burned across the surface, before they were extinguished by the cold. And like a behemoth from the depths, Unit 02 rose up. The left side of its torso was ruptured, the glowing radiators not working at all, and the ice which coated it was akin to appliqué armour. That was not enough to stop it hitting the underside of the Harbinger claws-first.

Yam shrieked again, as Unit 02 clung onto the monstrosity, digging in with bladed feet, clawing at its cratered skin and drawing up scattered flakes of loose flesh that fell down, dark blood freezing them solid. Shinji screamed in the back of the Unit as the Harbinger went into a terrifying spin, trying to shake its foe, and Asuka looked like she was only just managing to bite down on her own panicked noise, biting on her own lip as she forced an unseen AT-Field through the defences of the leviathan. Triggering the plasmathrowers on her arms, jets of stellar material gouged deep onto Yam, and once again the world-whale keening sounded as the strange heavens and flooded earth cycled again and again over the walls of the entry plug. Unheard sirens sounded, and yet more red lights joined the walls of warnings on the entry plug.

One frozen spire lit up for just a fraction of a second before a beam of sunfire cut through it, far brighter than the ones coming from the Evangelion, and scored a line along the tail of the Harbinger, leaving a trail of ionised area which lit the area in blue-green.

"Got it!" a voice sounded over the comms. "Thanks for the firing data, Eva-02!"

There was no response from the Unit, because the spasm of motion that provoked dislodged it, sending it flying in an uncontrolled arc. Despite the best efforts of the LITAN to stabilise it, it tumbled, trailing plasma for a second before the weapons cut off. The Harbinger lunged, far too quickly for something of that bulk, and tore at the war machine with its dreadful mouth, armour shattered under those hungry teeth. A human would have been disembowelled by such an injury. The Evangelion may not have had intestines in such a manner, but there was a flash of unreal light as an arcanotech engine failed, and a gout of dark blood gushed out, freezing into a sheet of ice which broke against the alien waters below. The Eva was tossed up into the air, like a bone discarded by a dog; up high, tumbling wildly.

And then everything changed, at the precise moment when the Unit broke through a layer of the tainted atmosphere that it had not known existed, and gazed up into the heavens.

A massive sun, the red of bloodied copper, hung in the sky, huge and gravid with the weight of aeons. It shone but dimly through the haze that filled the sky, though, which painted the world in the same orange tones that lit the boiling atmosphere below, which was a patch of white in this tangerine plane. _Things _hung in the air like dirigibles, and if the readings of the Evangelion were to be believed they were of a scale that could dwarf cities. There were clouds in the haze, yes, dark patches of grey-purple that looked out of place in this landscape, as if they were painted on the sky, and they rained the alien rain that fell down upon the human city below, flash-boiling as they hit the heat that the humanoid mecha was venting. And around, beyond the fragments of Chicago-2 that protruded into this strange place, on the distant horizon were mountains, great mountains, that reached up to girdle the world, encumbered by cyclopean architecture that was not so much built upon the towering geography as grown from it.

Shinji screamed.

Asuka screamed.

And then the Evangelion fell again, smashing down into a spire which partially rose into that alien place. The advertising boards which had once stood on the dead building, now frozen in ice, merely shattered under the impact, and the Eva emitted a dreadful, part-mechanical, part-organic noise. Sliding back down the facade, tearing off ice and building material alike, it left a trail of gore that sizzled and steamed.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Inside the plug, Asuka sucked in LCL, gritting her teeth against the deep, ache-pain in her stomach and the raw stabbing, burning feeling in the skin above it, and tried not to throw up. That was the most damage her Eva had taken in a long time; all the fluid in the plug had leapt to the side on impact, and the red lights flashing up on the diagram of the Unit showed how bad the damage was. For one, that had taken out two of her D-Engines, and the loss of both power and heat was going to be a problem. And for two... she exhaled with a whimper, the LCL tasting even more of blood that usual. The girl tried to straighten up, biting on her lip until it bled, forehead resting on the control yokes, until the agonising cramps faded. Her thoughts were a panicked mess, before she managed to relax slightly as her plug suit administered painkillers.

Behind her, Shinji was groaning, slumped forwards to lean heavily against her back. "Hurts..." he muttered, letting go to clutch his stomach.

"And it'll hurt even more if you slam yourself into the plug ceiling!" she snapped at him, forcing what remained of the pain back down and puling herself upright again. "Hold on! Wait! Why is it hurting!" A pause, as the Unit clawed itself out of the remnants of the building. "Gehirn, erratic evasion, flight path!" She took another pained breath, gloved hands grasped tight around the control yokes. "You better not be synchronising with my Evangelion! I don't need noise!"

"I'm not saying anything!"

"Not that kind of noise, idiot! Mental noise! And yes, you are talking! So shut up!"

"Even if I'm synching, it's not deliberate! Why would it be!" Shinji managed, in a breathy squeak, before breaking into a coughing fit.

"Asuka!" Major Katsuragi interrupted. "Report."

Twisting, its motions somewhat slowed by the layers of ice that now encrusted its damaged form, Unit 02 ascended, pulling up and away from the cityscape in a mad pattern that would have certainly helped it against weapons fire. With the Harbinger's speed, though, evasion would be less certain. "Heavy damage to midsection," Asuka stated, before adding, in a rather more agitated tone, "That damn... DAHACA-thing! Where was the warning? There's... there's something! Up above the clouds! Can you see it! Can you!"

"You were feeding me firing data," a second voice intruded. "I knew you were facing away. You just vanished and...now... can you see that fucker?"

"Nowhere," Asuka snapped back, as behind her, Shinji clung on for dear life as the Evangelion twisted and rolled. "That just took out even more of my auxes. I'm getting... oh."

[Strong turbulent thermoincline present. Radar efficiency through turbulent region is minimal. **WARNING!** Intense AT-Field detected!]

Unit 02 threw itself down again, losing all height as it tore down into the hydrocarbon sea with a muted sonic boom, and found that the newly formed lake was considerably shallower here. Inside the plug, both the Children grunted in pain as the synthorg ploughed into the ground, an empty space of boiled fluid around the splintered ground

But that motion was barely enough to evade the lunge of the Harbinger, which whipped metres over the Unit's head. And one reflexive order from Asuka was enough to fire an array of spikes from the two shoulder-fins on the Evangelion, metal rods the size of a man tearing into the underside of the beast from near point-blank range. The spent white-hot rails set the air on fire as they fell, kicking up clouds when they hit the frozen sea. Again the plasma whipped out from somewhere in the distance, scoring against the AT-Field and breaking through over the weakened area near the Eva, and the Harbinger keened out again, breaking off to flee into the noxious mist, smashing buildings as it went.

Asuka pulled her Unit to its feet, standing on the ground for once though ten metres of alien sea boiled around her, and gave chase.

"I spiked it!" she yelled, exultation overcoming the pain and her normal battle calm. "We can track it!"

"Good job, Asuka!" the Major said with a grim smile. "Ritsuko? Is the Relay up and running?"

"Bringing it up... it's just spinning up," the blonde replied, the harcontacts in her eyes aglow. "And..."

"We've got a signal... TITAN contact is back online, but... ma'am? It's not CRONOS!" a junior officer called out. "And... it's in the city... Dr Sylveste... well, that's who he claims he is, at least!"

"Check it!" Tokita snapped, fingers wrapped tight around the edge of the table.

No-one breathed as the ID code was read out over the link.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Yes, it's me," the man said, leaning forwards towards the screen despite the fact that they would not be able to see him on the voice-only connection. He was wearing a sealed survival suit, which looked remarkably like an armoured exoskeleton. His face was a small patch of flesh in the midst of bright orange.

"Uncle Cal!" Asuka interrupted, her icon flashing up on the conversation. "You're... thank God! I'm in combat with..." and she was cut off.

"I need her to focus," the Major said simply. "Doctor. What are you doing? That TITAN isn't recognised by the systems."

"CRONOS is gone. Catastrophic failure; the chamber with its mainframe collapsed. I'm bringing the..." the man flinched, as somewhere above them, something collapsed, "... I've bought all ten of the immature Third Generation TITANs online. Their waste heat alone will help down here, and I'm going to see what things are left in the factory-cradles that they can subvert. Tell Asuka I'm doing what I can... look! We've managed to get some Masts up. That should help handle the... well, the things that the TITANs are reporting about local geometry."

"Are true!" Ritsuko interrupted.

"God. Are they... oh, yes! We're getting multiple weapons systems... mostly on the outskirts, but... ah, yes." The man smirked. "One... two of the orbital defence platforms seem to be operational, but there are no lifesigns within. I would like to issue a formal request to NEG Command to interface with the TITANs to allow them to be ready."

Ritsuko frowned through the cheering. "They can't target something this low and fast-moving," she said to the Major, lips twitching into a snarl.

"I know," the dark-haired woman said, teeth gritted. "And do you know what it was that the Eva saw?"

"Yes." The blonde's voice was soft, almost inaudible. "We got the interface readings. Misato... it's a POLLEN we have here."

"I suspected that." The Major's knuckles were white, her pupils like pinpricks. "It's too familiar. And it stinks. As soon as you get Relay access to L2..."

"Yes. I... I hope the MAGI have a solution for this," Ritsuko said, her voice cracking.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The eye-like plasma cannon on D-AHACA flicked on and off, trails of ionised gas exploding from its wake. Within the tan-and-crimson mecha, within the command sarcophagus, Lieutenant Krishima twitched, unbreathing, pulseless. Her mind whirled with tactical data, the chatter of the iron dragon curled around her ego-image filling her thoughts until there was no space for anything else.

[Target acquired. Firing. Adjusting LGM. Target acquired. Firing. Adjusting LGM. Eva 02 is in proximity-close. Adjusting aim. Target acquired. Firing. Adjusting LGM. Target acquired...]

And on, and on, and on. The white sky above her was no long white, and instead it was covered by layer after layer of viewpoints of the battlefield. Mana could see them all, despite how they overlapped [Tactical data aid; prioritising useful frequencies], though her mind reeled when she thought about all that she was seeing. So she chose not to think, and instead accepted it.

There, a white-hot beam sliced through a building, sending the frozen corpse-spire [Lifesigns non-existent; structure contaminated; collateral damage free] once occupied by five thousand souls crashing to the ground, wreathed in boiling air. There, she watched as Unit 02 ducked and dodged, a wireframe tracked for her. Its two plasmathrowers were pathetic compared to her [Different valid tactical speciality], but she was sure that she couldn't take that much damage [Different valid tactical speciality]. She was hanging high, all four prehensile limbs latched onto spires, like some perverse alien sloth sending burning death out through this blinding un-world, only pausing her fire to move and relocate [evading now].

She could _kiss _the pilot of Unit 02 for managing to tag the foe like that. She wasn't blind any more, relying on the reflected bounces of those few times when the Harbinger loomed out of the fog, an unseen predator in unnatural depths. Now she could track it, fire on it, and that was what she was _there _for. She didn't envy the poor bastards in Unit 02, though, because the feed from their LAI [Inferior model LITAN designated 'Gehirn'] seemed to suggest that they were _pretty_ beat up.

Mana Krishima and Dahaca kept firing, because that was what they were meant to do.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Four green eyes ablaze like miniature suns, the red comet of Unit 02 broke the sound barrier, leaving a shock-wave of ruptured air and condensed vapour behind it. Down it plummeted, the falling angel meeting the loathsome form of Harbinger-6, and the flare of an AT-Field lit up the fog below in fractured, prismatic white.

Yam was slammed down, the hammer blow of force dispelling the freezing fog, and tore down into a diamond spire, impaling it like some deep sea creature bought to the depths as a trophy. Keening, it broke free, ichor smearing the ruins, and lashed back, everything twisting for a moment. The Evangelion twisted away, ice crackling on its hull, and behind it the alien waters and ground alike shattered. The hissing hail bombarded the freezing sea, debris the size of tanks falling like rain. Out of danger, Unit 02 balanced for a moment on top of a spire, its plasmathrowers joining the cutting beam from DAHACA from somewhere in the unholy fog, before it leapt again, avoiding a second retaliation that shattered the spire.

"Where the hell is the core!" Asuka barked into the comms. "I'm damaged, and there's no core at all! It's just healing anything I can do!"

Behind her, Shinji clung onto the seat as hard as he could, his eyes alternating between being open and closed. He didn't want to see this, didn't want to have to put up with the pain in his stomach and the horribly disconcerting feeling of someone else piloting the Eva, but on the other hand, with his eyes closed, his imagination filled in every last jolt and rock of the plug. Every moment felt like it was his last. The boy focussed on his breathing, forcing the inhalation and exhalation of this strange-tasting LCL to take a regular pattern, only to lose all control in a muffled scream as the horrific form of the Harbinger loomed out of the fog once again.

The Second Child, teeth bared in a snarl, threw both hands out, the air fracturing and splitting around them. It was barely enough to deflect the crushing impact of the Harbinger; the Evangelion was still set flying, unbraced, the needle-toothed maw of the alien monster snapping and biting and savaging the AT-Field spread before the Unit.

[**WARNING!**]

Asuka was barely breathing, eyes clamped shut, her mouth a tight line. Shinji, too, was not breathing, although that was because his lungs were empty, yet he was still trying to scream. In the odd, mad clarity that comes at such times, he could see the cilia on the surface of the Harbinger's skin, diaphanous tendrils that swayed like the summer grass in this unnatural cold. A hiccuped intake of breath was barely enough; his eyes were stinging from the tears.

Though his hands felt like leaden gloves, though he was weak from mindless terror, Shinji Ikari reached forwards, and wrapped his hands, in their ill-filling, borrowed plug-suit, around Asuka's, and threw the force of his intent behind that shield, the mnemonics filling his mind. Glittering, sparkling, the AT-Field flared, almost guttering, pulsing like a heartbeat.

And out of the fog, a shot from DAHACA came, slamming into the behind of Yam with the heat and fury of a star, explosive vaporisations of god-knew-what beneath its skin rippling in violet-green bursts of alien light. The Harbinger screamed, and in that moment the shield of Unit 02 became a hammer, thrust into the maw of the alien beast, shattering needle-teeth under its inexorable motion. Twisting around, Asuka pulled herself away from its maw, and cut a score along its side with her plasmathrower.

A pulse of her mind, and the Harbinger was thrown upwards, its blood joining the alien rain to burn the same purple-green in the air of Earth. Up above the clouds it vanished, before it descended once again, roaring, a cascade of bursting ground and light marking its bombardment. A set of C2's defence systems opened up on it, a few scattered weapons miraculously working through this impossible cold, but they merely ricocheted off its AT-Field and its skin, and they died when it retaliated.

"That's it!" Dr Akagi yelled, back in the control room. "That interface layer! Those reading from Unit 02, when it was thrown up there! That's it!"

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The groans and creaks of overstressed architecture were a constant refrain, a background choir which set everyone on edge. But this one was louder, and the dust danced on the surfaces, the ceiling cracking in places as the eerie sounds echoed around the underground chamber. Something was going on up there, for sure, but with the local Grid down, no-one could be certain.

"It's a Harbinger," Kensuke Aida muttered to Toja, as his fingers played over his PCPU. The device was running purely off internal memory, and many of its higher order functions were shut down, but the boy had a more expensive one specifically so he could still do things in instances when the local Grid was cut off. "I'm sure of it. Weird things happening, power cuts, Grid down. It's pretty obvious." He sighed. "I bet Shinji is out there right now. It's clearly why him and that girl vanished; they'd got a top secret warning or something. Maybe on some hidden implants." The boy sighed again. "He could have at least mentioned something to us. I wish I could see what he's doing!"

Toja, for his part, was rather more practical than his friend, and rather more aware of what Evangelion and Harbinger conflict involved. He grunted in response, and shook his head. "Look, that's just guessin'," he told his friend, "...and you're really not meant to talk about this sort of stuff in public, remember?" The dark-skinned boy glanced around the room. He had to admit, no-one seemed to be paying much attention to them. Everyone else looked... ill. The tour guide was slumped against a pillar, face clammy, as he periodically tried to see if he could connect to the local grid. Several other people had been sick.

And now that he thought about it, there was an odd pressure, right behind his sinuses. He felt as if he had a heavy cold, almost; that sort of congested feeling, but he could breath freely. And there was a hot feeling in his nose, like he was having a nosebleed, but not quite. Toja took a deep breath, and shook his head, to try to clear it. The shift made him feel slightly better, but it was still there, still an odd pressure. "Look," he suggested, "you're good with computers, yeah?"

Kensuke rolled his eyes. "Just a little bit, yeah," he said, sarcastically. "I've touched a computer a few times in my life. But only at special times."

"Yeah, yeah. Listen, go help the guy with the computer stuff; you got on with him. I did a first aid course because you had to do it for the SWP stuff at the school, so I'll go help with the other people and stuff." He shook his head, red eyes narrowed. "If this's a Harbinger..."

"... bad stuff, yeah," Kensuke said, seriously. "On it."

With a groan, Toja pulled himself up from the floor of the museum, and wiped his nose on his sleeve, leaving a red trail.

Ah. So he was actually having a nosebleed. That explained the hot feeling. Pinching his nose, he went looking for the toilet to get a tissue.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

There was now a Relay synchronised with the L2 Relay, the vast sorcerous ansible thrumming as it violated space and time to link up with its twin on the other side of the Atlantic. And although that was a great help, because it meant that there could be MAGI access, Dr Akagi could not help but feel worried about it. The L2 Relay had always been shut down when any sign of a Harbinger was detected, and although this one may have been some distance away from Chicago-2 – the C2 unresponsive even to the TITANs – a change in r-state would be catastrophic for the delicate arcane machinery. But it was a risk they had to take. "Maya?" she asked.

"Yes... yes," the younger woman said, her voice slightly distorted by the compression. She would be in the dive chambers, Ritsuko knew; the blonde was secretly a little thankful that she had been on shift at the time. Lieutenant Ibuki was reliable. "Sorry, Dr Akagi... just... yes! The MAGI have three-to-zero conditional agreement with your hypothesis!"

"They're giving us three beth on the data limitations, though," a second Operator interjected.

"That sounds about right," Tokita said from Ritsuko, wringing his hands together. "Two to three beth... yeah." He licked his lips. "I've seen worse limitations," he added, before leaning subtly forwards, calling out to the pilot of his project, "Mana! Did you get this! Harbinger-6 isn't fully localised! Its central nervous system doesn't terminate in that body; it's something to do with the POLLEN!"

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

There was a crunch and shriek of metal and the Evangelion tore the point off a spire, hurling the debris at the Harbinger, only for the kilotonnes of metal and diamond to stop dead in the air. "Didn't work," Asuka noted to herself, hands wrapped tight around the control yokes.

"Of course it didn't work," Shinji snapped from behind her. "It's taking AT-Field blows. Normal stuff doesn't work! We both know..."

"... it was _meant _to distract it, rather than be ignored," Asuka hissed, barely breathing. She had no breath to spare for him. "But..." she paused, and closed her Eyes for a fraction of a second, before opening them with a new resolve. "That might work. If it can work, I'll _make _it work," she said, sapphire-cold Eyes locked on the projections and the data relayed from the MAGI.

"Make what work?"

"Just shut up. I need you to do something," the girl said, mouth in a thin line. "Hold on tight. Around... me," she said, reluctantly. "I don't want you flying lose and knocking me over or something, or... or distracting me by breaking your fingers, or... not so tight!"

"Sorry," Shinji muttered, to where her ear would have been if it had not been under its armoured cowl, loosening his new grip around her waist. Whatever appreciation he might have normally had for the situation he found himself in was completely negated by the knowledge of what was going on out there.

"This is going to be interesting," the girl said, Eyes now focussed on the Harbinger. "Just lucky we have the 'dakka' thing around, really."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

A skyscraper shattered, torn apart by unnatural forces, and the shattered diamond remnants fell upwards into the obscured heavens. DAHACA threw itself aside, but the left side of its torso was scarred and pitted, the crimson-and-tan paint flayed off. Mana swore loudly, and [Stealth systems compromised, evade,] threw herself into a mad swirl without thinking. The maw of the Harbinger unfolded once again, a bud blooming from an acute angle, and the blossom-fragments pulsed again, a second blast rising into the air accompanied by the rent remnants of structures.

"Krishima," Tokita said, frustration evident in his voice, "you're going to have to hold out longer. Army people have found that their local assets don't work in the environment, and the Eva people say that strategic weapons won't work with that... POLLEN... in place, because the blast couldn't get in."

"Thanks for telling me that!" the woman snapped, ensnared in Dahaca's coils. "Evade, evade, evade... come on, stop... argh," a twist snatched her away from the next blast, "... goddamn, go back to trying to bite me! Shooting back is... cheating!" DAHACA hooked onto a building as it fled, the building groaning as its internal structure was torn asunder, and the momentum was enough to twist a diamond wall off, the facade coming away in the mecha's hands. The woman swore again [Object not functional as cover], and tossed it away, firing her plasma cannon; not aiming to hit, but just to knock its aim off. And that seemed to have at least some effect, for the mouth un-blossomed, the terrifying sight replaced by the maw once more.

"I've lost contact with Unit 02," she reported, as DAHACA pulled off manoeuvres which would have taken the full attention of most pilots, trying to lose the monstrosity in the frozen spires of Chicago-2. "02 just vanished into the hydrocarbons... and..." she grunted in pain, the left arm of DAHACA disintegrating and the iron dragon coiled around her heating red hot all down its left flank [Hull integrity compromised], a burst of hairline barbs wrapped in lavender light falling down from the heavens and revealing that the Harbinger had other assets, "... no support! At all!"

[Prioritising targets – attempt to destroy hostile attack mechanism.]

"Katsuragi," Tokita growled, whirling on her, the light from the mainscreen washing over his face and reflecting off his red eyes. "Where's your precious Evangelion gone! It's..."

"You're sure?" the Major said, ignoring the man in favour of Ritsuko.

"Yes! If you look at the change in r-state with localised Minkowski-flat z and... it's certain! The MAGI have three-to-nill agreement!" the blonde explained, gesturing with a slightly wild look in her blue-lit eyes. "

"Right!" Misato, despite the stress, let out a small smirk. "I've got a plan. Remember the theoretical Lambda Confinement Operation, Rits?"

Dr Akagi blinked. "It's purely theoretical, and wasn't intended for..."

"You want this to metastasise?" the dark-haired woman asked, her face dead. "I'm not going to let that. Not another POLLEN. _Ever_." Turning on her heel, she strode over to the superior officers who were staring at her, and a few brief words were exchanged.

Tokita blinked. "Lambda Confinement?" he asked Ritsuko, hesitantly.

"It's..." the woman licked her lips, eyes flicking around the brightly lit control centre, her voice unconsciously dropping despite the noise of the LAIs and the panhumans in the background, "... it was a theoretical idea for something an Evangelion could do when engaging targets with... well, targets causing a localised violation of (n,m)-causal 7-geometry."

"... what?" the project engineer asked, the confusion evident in his voice.

"It should work," Ritsuko said, her normal brusqueness back. "Misato was the one who oversaw the proof-of-concept work in Ostberlin-2, and Asuka was the pilot for those tests. At least we won't have to explain it on the fly."

The Major was back, a hint of self-satisfaction on her face. "They approved it," she said.

"What did you tell them?" the blonde asked.

"Do we have contact with Unit 02? The orders should hit as soon as it bounces over. She'll know what to do."

"I hear you," Asuka said, calmly – almost too calmly, Tokita thought, as her image appeared on screen. "Lambda Confinement? I'm ready."

"Yes! Asuka! What are you..."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Rising from underneath the monstrosity from the depths, wreathed in boiling hydrocarbons, Unit 02 punched upwards. The air boomed once, twice, three times and more as supersonic punches wrapped in fields of prismatic radiance gored out chunks of the rugose carapace of the monstrosity. Even in this terrible cold, the blood of Yam burned in the air, pattering down upon the iced-over form of the Eva.

Within the plug, Asuka smiled, leaning forwards to squint through the gore-smeared eyes of her mecha. "Nice distraction," she said, her voice almost too calm as she thrust both hands out, crimson fingers diving into the monster's innards, only to find a second carapace below the first.

"Can you take out its mouth!" Lieutenant Krishima snapped, her portrait shuddery and ringed with orange. "That's what it's firing from!"

"Not from this position," the girl replied. "Gehirn, full thrust, vertical."

"Communicate better and..." the pilot of the other war machine began

Asuka did not reply, as the force of the Evangelion, boosted by its AT-Field, shunted the considerably Harbinger vertically upwards, manhandling its bulk. The radiator panels of the humanoid war machine were glowing white hot, trying to both handle the output and prevent the terrible cold from claiming the Unit. Trailing fire, a mental order shifted its path, and the Eva and the Harbinger together slammed into the frozen remnants of a biodome, crushing it. Rolling over and over, the heat evaporating the alien sea and rendering the frozen plants to sludge, a crack resounded through the turbulent air and something broke inside the Harbinger, a fresh wave of blood welled out of its many wounds, hissing and corroding the shattered ground below the two warring titans. Like a blossom unfolding from some place that it could not be, the mouth of the alien monstrosity unfolded, questing, hunting.

A death-grip sealed around the protrusion, and Unit 02 squeezed, ichor seeping through its fingers.

The keen which that produced shook the world. The terrible pulse of sound forced moisture out of the air, and the hydrocarbon smog rained down, only for the droplets to be sent flying out, making the path of the shock-noise visible for all to see in this dead city. The noise ceased to be noise, and became something monstrous and physical as frozen buildings cracked, ice cascading off them to shatter on the floor, and the detritus floating in the alien sea was sent tumbling. The Evangelion held on, though, shifting to dig into the Harbinger itself, so the violence of its noise only hurt the monster more.

In the entry plug, Shinji clasped his hands over his eats, the painful noise heard not through the plug's speakers, but through the seat and the LCL and the walls and his bones. Asuka did not move, did not twitch, barely breathed, save to say, "Hold on!" to him, sharply.

But he recognised what she was doing. Oh yes. He could feel it, think it, taste it, for all that it made no sense for him to be doing it. If the boy closed his eyes, he could see the mnemonic devices she was calling up, the AT-Field construct she was slowing assembling in her mind's eye. He could hear the muttered words, the subvocalisations, and on the wall of the entry plug he could see the placards flash up as aide-memoirs. Shinji Ikari could feel, could see what was about to happen, and held on tighter, trying not to think, because from his own experience a disruption would be disastrous.

The Evangelion slammed down on the ground, pushing up to wrench the Harbinger skywards. The plasmathrowers licked out, to the beast's underside. Three layers of broken prismatic light folded around Yam, and they folded and bent, unmoving yet moving deeper and deeper into the world, the light contracting. The sky above her rippled and pulsed, drawing nearer, devouring buildings in the earth-shaking shriek of the tortured Harbinger.

And right at the edge of the torn world, where in one eye the orange sky continued forever and in the other it was a jagged seam, Asuka Langley Soryu tore at the world, the light of her soul a barb into the world-body of that which should never have been.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

When gods play, spacetime is all too fragile.

The world, as seen by humans, is a lie. The world, as predicted by quantum theory, is a lie. The world, as predicted by arcane theory, is a lie.

And in another lie, spacetime is like a sheet of brittle ice, permeated by flaws, by hairline cracks, which conceals dark waters below.

When Unit 02 and Yam clashed then, it was as if terrible beast had crushed that ice with one void-black hoof, before moving on uncaring of the devastation it left in its wake. Like spiders' webs, the cracks fused and meshed as the fabric of the world buckled under the monstrous pressure. They joined each other in a complex, spreading network, a fractal pattern that continually formed and reformed as spacetime bled, scabbed, and bled again.

Asuka Langley Soryu tore at the world. Sheer energy from the tortured spacetime transformed into high-frequency radiation, and from there formed showers of r-state particles that blossomed around the breach before dying in this staid place, their own offspring short-lived.

It was like a small sun exploding above Chicago-2. Vast storms were evoked, whipping the toxic atmosphere around the breach into a vast anticyclone.

Fissures in reality ran outwards at the speed of light.

And things were not as they should be.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

There was a discontinuity

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Nothing.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Nothing.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Nails digging into the palms of her hands, Major Katsuragi stared up at the whited-out contact screen, as behind her the scientists clamoured and threw around meaningless terms. There was a shadow over Chicago-2, night black clouds tossed like the wildest ocean by the mad temperature gradient, and she could _taste_ and _smell_ the wrongness in the world, all around her. She didn't need the implanted sensors to tell her about the localised r-state shift.

"Shinji," Misato whispered, softly. "Asuka. Please. Report. Just... anything."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Nothing.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Above, blue-black, speckled with points of light.

Below, the Earth, a curving disc of blue and green.

Around, against a cerulean backdrop, the fire and flare of burning exotic matter wreathed Unit 02 and the Harbinger as together they fell.

[Chicago-2 Emergency, this is Evangelion Unit 02. Please respond.] A single message repeated over and over again by Gerhirn.

And then Unit 02 lashed out with a hand covered in frozen ichor, and tore off Yam's jaw. The three remaining eyes of the Unit into the newly-_there_ core, revealed within the mutilated jaw of the Harbinger.

[Evade, repeat, evade. Firing data fed to TITAN-systems. Requesting proximity-red support.]

"What?" Asuka blurted out. "Gehirn, what are you..." she paused, as her brain processed the information. With a sudden yelp, she kicked off from the Harbinger, trailing alien gore, arms spread wide. "Major," she yelled into the communications, "are you there! What's it doing!"

"Asuka, you're alive! Get clear!" Major Katsuragi interrupted. "It's now in the firing arcs of the antiorbital defences, and as soon as you get clear, they'll fire! Or before... Sylveste, get those TITANs to stop! Let her get clear! Asuka, Shinji, brace for impact!"

The girl's control shattered, and she snarled something incoherent, hands choking the control yokes as she yanked them as hard as she could. Shinji could only exhale slowly, for he was merely an observer, a watcher without control or any way he could help. Leaning forwards, arms wrapped around her, he tensed up, knowing all the time that it would do no good, and closed his eyes.

"You can do it," he said, softly, impotently.

Down below, mechanical systems whirred, adjusted, and adjusted again. Mindless machines chattered to each other in facilities where the only role panhumanity had was to chain the beasts of war, to prevent them from seeking any target which entered their vision. The Third Generation of TITANs were in control here, and consensus had been reached. The risk-and-reward calculus of their existence was clear, and the vast complexity of dumb-programmes had reached what might be deemed an intelligent conclusion.

They fired.

Above the shadow-choked remnants of Chicago-2, a star of unreal colour flashed into being.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Behind his sealed suit, the expression of Calvin Sylveste was corpse-pale. "No," he whispered. "I... not a... you're not dead. You can't be. No."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Like a meteor, wreathed in the decay products of alien worlds and blasphemous Colour, Unit 02 dove. The prismatic glare around it equalled the radiance of the fireball which licked at the fractured spacetime like some great beast. Inside the Evangelion, both Shinji and Asuka were as one, focussed only on the dive and the needle-like AT-Field that protruded in front of and behind the machine. The projected image of the Harbinger before them filled their entire field of vision, and an ululating screech came from the Evangelion.

And violently, just before impact, the controls were yanked up, and the Evangelion span one hundred and eighty degrees, bringing one foot in an inverted pirouette that tore through the air with a crack.

The AT-Field barb hit the Harbinger first, shattering its own field in iridescence that flowed like oil droplets around the mecha, roiling and boiling around the adamant sheen of the humanoid figure. The momentum of the collision carried them both, the air tearing in monstrous thunder as the entwined figures raced ahead of the shockwave. And then there was the gush of lavender blood, which flash-boiled in the atmosphere of the earth, radiating uncolours in the hostile environment.

Unit 02 tore straight through, gore-smeared. But preceding it was an orange-red orb, torn clean from the entity by the force of the impact. The world-whale of Yam went limp, spasming, and the detached core suddenly lit up white, as an AT-Field sprung to life, so intense that it bent the world around it.

Within the entry plug, both Children screamed together, two minds focussed to one aim, and the Evangelion stabbed one hand through the warped world, through the brightness of the light, and two minds pulsed with killing intent.

The core shattered.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Calvin Sylveste exhaled heavily as he heard the cheering from the command centre, momentarily steaming up his faceplate before it cleared. He did not cheer, his legs buckling under him. "Well done," he said, weakly, unable to move for the relief flooding through his veins, making him shake.

[Dr Sylveste,] the communication link said, a new isolated channel opening. [What is the matter? Are you sick? Your biosignature does not indicate that you are suffering from r-state sickness, and the anti-zonal drugs you have taken should account for the localised 2-shift.]

"PROMETHEUS," the man addressed the Third Generation TITAN, anger breaking into his voice as he lay on the ground. "Why! Why did you fire then!"

A pause. [Systems analysis was clear. Ten-to-zero agreement with other registered intelligences. No friendly units were detected in firing arcs. Concern exists in seven-to-three agreement that your sensory input may have been affected by the extranormal phenomena caused by the breach in the r-state by hostile-1. Localised and temporary exposure to extreme r-state variance is known to cause hallucinations, rather than permanent brain damage and slash or death.]

"Hostil... what are you..." the man sighed, sounding nothing more like a kettle escaping steam. "Diagnose your pattern recognition packages, PROMETHEUS. One of them was friendly."

[Confirmation was certain, Dr Sylveste. Two hostile extra-normal entities were observed. No IFF system was detected. Engagement was clear within NEG combat parameters.]

Trying to pinch his brow, his fingers meeting his faceplate, the man sighed. "TITANs, limit parameters to base LITAN functionality. Begin full check of Total-type components compared to last examination."

[Acknowledged,] ten voices chorused.

"Well," the rust-red haired man said, after a moment's thought, "that's what you get when you activate untested non-Moderated AGI-systems in an emergency."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Below, the world was a blue, white and green disc, Chicago-2 a toxic, ruined, slagged wound on the landscape that filled the entire screen. Neither of the Children had eyes for the sight below as the Evangelion fell. Filling her lungs with a deep breath of LCL, Asuka leant forwards again, forehead resting on the control yokes. Behind her, with a similar sigh, Shinji leant back. He had briefly contemplated leaning forwards too, but a moment's thought raised the flaw with that plan. The boy squeezed his eyes shut, rather than stare at the panorama rising to meet him. It was bad enough that he was feeling ill from the pain and the strange taste of the LCL without feeling disorientated by how his inner ear was telling him that he was upright when the sight below disagreed.

"Gehirn, control the landing. Select the optimal target," Asuka ordered, still slumped forwards.

[Yes, Asuka,] the mechanical voice said, showing no sign of the weariness that seemed to fill the plug. Of course it was not weary; it was an automata. The Eva shifted in mid-air, the remaining A-Pods moving to control the fall and take the Unit down.

Shinji spoke, breaking the silence. "That... um." He took a deep breath. "Wow."

"I told you I was amazing," the girl said, not moving from her resting position.

"I'm shaking all over." He groaned. "And it hurts."

"I told you not to synch with my Eva."

"It's... it's..."

"You can let go of me. Right now. Do I make myself clear?" Asuka said, a note of menace in her voice.

"Sorry, I..." the boy began, shifting.

"No, really. I love it when people squeeze sympathetic burns," she said, gloves squeezing tighter around the control yokes, choking them. "Please cling on tighter. You idiot."

Shinji hastily let go, removing his hands from her midsection. "Sorry, sorry, sorry," he apologised, moving his hands to the safety of his own lap and the ache in his gut. "I'm really sorry for that! Really!" He let out a slow breath of LCL. "Sorry!"

There was a sniff from the slumped-over figure. "Better," she said, somewhat grudgingly. "Well, I'd say that I did adequately," she continued, in a somewhat brighter voice. "I've only been this damaged once before, but I think this counts as a suitable first encounter with a Harbinger. Given that I killed it almost completely on my own, and almost got blown up by my own side."

"Um," said Shinji, massaging the back of his neck. "You did better than my first time," he offered.

"Your first time was you completely untrained against a Harbinger when you had no idea how to pilot the Prototype Model! It doesn't count when I'm trying to see if I performed up to expectations!" Asuka snapped, straightening up and whirling around.

Shinji opened his eyes to see her glaring at him as the world filled the screen behind her, her eyes cold and hard. "We killed the Harbinger, didn't we?"

"_I_! _I _killed the Harbinger! And..." she worked her mouth, inhaling, exhaling, face flushed. "It still managed to basically destroy the city!" she finally managed. "I couldn't stop it doing that! Another city just... just gone and... I couldn't stop it!"

"Yes," Shinji said, softly. "I mean no. I mean... it happened so fast. Toja, Kensuke..." he paused, biting on his lip, screwing up his eyes. "And... they might have been underground? Maybe? And... your Dr What'shisname was underground and survived," he said, talking more to himself than her. "They were in the same building as him. And..." he trailed off, overcome by the immensity of the scale of the atrocity which faced him. How many people had he seen in a few hours in Chicago-2? How many of them would have been above ground, in that city which had flash-frozen?

The rest of the ride down was silent.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

There was already a containment tent – a vast fold of smart materials made for air-crashes – ready and waiting by the time the ichor-encrusted boots of Unit 02 hit the runway of the small airstrip. Under the weight of the mecha, the runway warped, fragments of bloodied ice showering down. The military personnel in ANaMiNBC protection who marched around like tiny ants kept far away from the detritus from the armoured monstrosity. Chicago-2 could not be seen from this place, but there was a murky, orange-black cloud blooming up like some perverse fungus on the northern skyline.

"Major Katsuragi," Asuka said, opening a link to Misato, "I've positioned Unit 02 for recovery purposes. The Army lot just need to hurry up and get the containment tent set up, and... have you got the exit equipment in place, or will we have to use Eva EVA equipment?"

There was an exhalation. "You two," the older woman said, "I have good news, and not-so-good news."

"I don't like the sound of that," Shinji said, drily, as he fiddled with the collar of his borrowed plug suit, trying to find the buttons which would retract the cowl and loosen it so it wasn't so tight.

"It's not _all _bad," Misato said, trying to inject some levity. "Shinji, I think you'd like to know that now that the POLLEN is gone, we've started to bring some things back online in C2, and find out which areas... which areas are undamaged. Your friends appear to have been in one of the deeper areas; their PCPUs are were still active, so I contacted them. The Foundation is moving the people out of its area, using some of the deep transport things..."

"Made to move Evangelions," Asuka interjected.

"Among other things, yes," the woman agreed, "and they've been picked up by our security. They're going to be fine."

The boy let out a relieved sigh. "Th-thank you," he said, voice shaky. He paused for a moment. "And what about that other robot thing?" he asked. "The one fighting with us."

"DAHACA?" Misato sounded faintly surprised. "It was very heavily damaged in the splash from the Lambda Confinement, but the pilot's alive."

Asuka shrugged. "Necessary sacrifices."

"Which Tokita will _not _shut up about," Ritsuko interrupted. "No, I tell a lie. He's been also been being smug about the 'tactical success' of DAHACA."

"I'm trying to talk to the Children, Rits," Misato said, irritation creeping into her voice, before she sighed again. "And then there's the less-good news. It's going to be hours before we can get you out of the Eva. We want to keep its pilot in it, in case anything happens with... with the place where the POLLEN opened, and we don't have the equipment in place to properly decontaminate you. I'm in contact with some people who talked with me before the demonstration, and they're going to help get us back over to L2 ASAP so we can get repairs, but for now, you're going to have to wait."

"What!" two voices erupted together.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

There were three people missing from the Ashcroft Representatives, and their spaces were filled with a flat grey sigil. North America, Finance and Society had been above ground in Chicago-2. A fourth, the Representative for Research, was only operating from a voice-only communications link, from a hospital bed.

"... and development is going to be set back," she continued, voice surprisingly strong for someone suffering from r-state exposure. "Thank God that Dr Sylveste was fine, and I've heard news from him that although CRONOS was lost, the Third Generation TITANs saw successful use. That's at least some mercy, along with the fact that Unit 02 proved its worth ten times over _and _got the kill."

Gendo Ikari stared at the wall-screen, located in a small, secure room rather than his office for once, and nodded. "Yes," he said, calmly. "Major Katsuragi was selected for her command skills and her proven capacity to remain function in r-state variant scenarios. She fulfilled her operational duties."

"I was praising the pilot, Ikari," the Representative for Research snapped. "I understand that it was her first deployment against a Harbinger."

The man remained calm, leaning forwards slightly. "This instance was unlike previous Harbinger incursions. This was a direct, city-destroying incursion; even the previous Harbinger did not manage that." Behind his opaque glasses, his eyes flicked up for a moment, gaze unconsciously shifting to the ceiling where, kilometres above, the bulk of Mot still stood. "And it came with no warning."

"That's not entirely true," Oversight said, shifting uncomfortably, her eyes reddened and still slightly damp. "Technically, it was within the estimation given by the OSS."

"It did not register like the previous ones," Gendo said. "We at least had foreshadowing for them."

"True," the woman admitted. She sighed, and dabbed at her eyes. "W-we need to talk about replacing Lama, Jeltje and Carmen," she said, reluctantly.

Aires Mocumbi, the Representative for Africa coughed, Eyes flicking away from the camera to consult something on the table before him. "Society and Finance should be fine for the moment... their Deputy Representatives are suitable, and Kita, especially, is looking very good in Society."

"I was considering him for my replacement," Asha Rosaiah said on behalf of Asia. "I'd certainly support him taking over duties at Society."  
"As would I," Gendo agreed. The fact that he would be another addition to the man's faction among the Representatives was only an added bonus. "The problem will be North America," he said, clinically. "I think it is clear the capital is moving, and North America will require a strong hand to placate them."

"It's ahead of schedule," South America said, the older _nazzady _flicking her blue-highlighted hair, "but we can move ahead. I'll be sure to be prominent on the South America side of things; you can handle Africa, Aires?"

The African Representative nodded. "Yes," he agreed. "We should be able to cope... if only we'd had another year or two." He shook his head. "North America, though... what about your Deputy Representative, Ikari? Fuyutsuki is respected."

Gendo shook his head. "He won't take it. He's already starting to slow down, and has talked to me about retiring in the next few years," he said, face showing no emotion.

"Fair enough," South America said. "We'll need to pull together a short-list; none of the North America Advisors look like they'd really be able to fill Lama's boots." She cleared her throat, uncomfortably.

There was a moment's silence.

"Is that everything?" Oversight asked, blinking away tears. "I... I think that's everything it needs all of us for. I'll... I'll begin looking over candidates for NA... I'll welcome your advice on that, Madesky."

South America nodded. "Yes. And I think that's everything. Now... it's time to handle the press."

One by one, the images blinked out, leaving only the blanked-out icon of Research left with Gendo. "What did you know?" she hissed at him.

"Only what UNITY told us," he responded, coldly. "If I'd know that the Harbinger was coming then, I would have moved everything to make sure we didn't have one of our pilots trapped there without access to an Eva. We dodged a bullet there, Christina; we could have lost two Evangelions today." Unseen, his knuckles whitened under his gloves. "That would have been a catastrophe of the same level as the loss of the city."

There was silence from that faceless icon. "We will be talking," she responded, eventually, before disconnecting.

"I'm sure we will," Gendo said, sarcasm creeping into his voice. He did, however, check that she was certainly gone before he said that, before sighing, and pulling himself to his feet. Placing his glasses down on the table before him, he cleaned the lenses, a small hand mirror emerging from his pocket as he checked his appearance. The mirror vanished again with a snap, and he left the small room, a few doors enough to lead him back to his office. The dark-haired man paused a moment, and then strode in.

Ryoji Kaji looked away from the window which overlooked the verdant landscape, a faint smile on his face. "Well, that was an eventful day," he said, turning to face Gendo, who stood, impassively, at the entryway, the light from the Geocity reflecting off his glasses.

The door slid silently closed behind the Representative, and the only noise in the hollow office was the click of his heels against the black marble of the floors.

Kaji tilted his head slightly. "Did you know it was coming?" he said, trying to get a response.

There was silence, as the two men stared at each other across Gendo's vast office. Ryoji Kaji did not sweat, did not change his rate of breathing and adrenaline was not flooding his system. He knew that the systems in his body were shutting off his tells. But even with that, he had the worrying suspicion that this Ikari was getting more out of him than he was reading from the man's eye-obscured face.

"Hints," Gendo said, voice crisp. "I had seen the reports from UNITY. I expected it to show up mid-transit. It is just as well that I ordered the flight-capable armour fitted."

"Mmm hmm." It was an eminently non-committal noise, a holding sound as Gendo made his way over to his desk. "This is not the Romanian Fragment," he said, as the other man's hand touched the box.

There was no response.

"It had already been replaced."

"I see." Kaji could not help but feel a little disappointed by the lack of reaction from the man. "And so, Mr Kaji, what is this box?"

Ryoji Kaji shot a wide grin at the older man. "Oh, something you expressed an interest in at our last contact," he said. He brushed some non-existent lint off his shoulder. "As far as I've been able to tell, it's a genuine copy of the listed sections from the AUS-000 site. From 323-01900-ish to the end of 324."

"How did you get it?"

The inevitable question was cold and flat, like a knife. "Because the OSS gave it to me to give to you," Kaji said, without changing his smile. "My contact wanted you to have it. Don't worry," Kaji said, turning to go. "It's almost certainly not intended to physically kill you." His footsteps echoed all the way out.

The glassed man watched him all the way out. "Thank you, Mr Kaji. You have been useful," he said, as the man stepped through the door, and internally he smiled at the flinch, just before it sealed again. Once he was sure the other man was gone, Gendo turned to one of the shadowed edges of the room. "Rei," he said, and a spot-light flashed on, revealing the pale girl sitting there, book on lap, staring at him.

The grey-eyed girl nodded, once.

"Good," Gendo said, with satisfaction.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Misato winced, taking a deep breath. "You can do this," she muttered to herself, before depressing the button. "Shinji? Asuka?" she started.

"What are you doing, idiot!

"Me? It's your fault!"

"How is it my fault? My Eva, my rules!" There was a noise which could only be described as a harrumph. "And that means my music!"

"I'm trying to get some rest! And you're taking up too much space; you moved in the way when I was trying to stretch!" the boy protested.

Misato coughed. "Ahem! I was just saying..."

"Finally!" Asuka snapped. "Have you got a decontamination crew in yet so he can get out of _my_plug?"

"... there's going to be a further delay," Ritsuko interrupted, her icon appearing on the inner plug wall. "We were moved down the priority line again, because the transport planned for the Eva was repurposed."

The groan from both Children was heartfelt. "How long?" Shinji managed. "Please. Just... get me out of here. It _hurts _and... look, we're both in quite a bit of pain. And tired. And she's still flooded with adrenaline so won't try to get some rest."

"Rest? You've been complaining so much neither of us could get rest!"

"So we're both in quite a bit of pain and ill-tempered," Shinji continued, over her. "You know. Sympathetic burns and all. So... please? How much longer?"

"At least another hour," was Misato's honest response.

"Can't I just eject the plug away from the Unit?" Asuka tried. Then at least we can just have it scrubbed, without having to worry about contamination from the Eva, too?"

The dark-haired woman sighed, tapping her fingers on the wall. "As I told you before, _no_," the Major said. "Plug ejections in that manner are not for fun. They are not a game. You two will just have to sit it out."

The petty bickering had already started again by the time she closed the channel, and she groaned. "You'd think they'd be more serious," she muttered to herself. "I know it must hurt, but..." she sighed, "... no, I'm being too harsh." The woman wiped her brow. "God knows we're all short-tempered right now."

"It's better this way," Ritsuko said, darkly, icon appearing in Misato's Eyes. "I'd rather have them fighting over personal space than have them brooding about the casualty count. It's..." her voice choked slightly, "... well, we'll just have to work on getting the Unit moved ASAP so we can get the Unit 01 and 00 teams working on it. We... we don't have any intact Evas at the moment. Unit 00's new hand hasn't yet been attached and Unit 01 is still critically damaged and now Unit 02 has taken m-major damage and we're going to have to... to... prioritise repairs based on need and..." The blonde put on a brave face, a brittle mask over her inner core. It was that or cry. "Keep busy, yes?"

"Yes," Misato said, shoulders slumping. "Busy-busy." Her hands balled into fists. "That's us."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Yellow spoke.

"This is a problem."

Green spoke.

"This was not expected until the tenth."

Red spoke.

"Th-this is a cr-cr-crit_i_cal error."

White spoke.

"No. The interpretation of the texts was incorrect. With this information, the key to paragraph one hundred and nineteen of the second book has been obtained."

Red spoke.

"Th-this is too l-large a problem to p-put down to a missstranslation. The d-d-data from UNITY was incorrect!"

Blue spoke.

"The data from UNITY was partial."

Green spoke.

"This is a concern. Do we know if Ikari has data from OBVLION which would show his foreknowledge in this?"

Yellow spoke.

"It is not known. He claims not. We were to make use of the failure of Project Daeva; it did not fail because of this unclarified event."

Red spoke.

"It sh-should not have happened! Have UNITY checked! With s-something like _that_ th-thing, it is not tru_st_worthy! Could OB_LIV_ION have c-contaminated UNITY?"

White spoke.

"UNITY will be checked. And the scenario is still on course. That will be all."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

A luminescent shimmer played across the gemstone-encrusted gold of the roof. The precious stones caught the light from the water below, caught it and sent it forth in all directions. Prismatic sprays sparkled against the wet walls of this underground cavern, catching the gilded coral edged in tarnished brazen green in strange lights. This place, this far-reaching cavern that had been built through uncounted ages, and whose history was written in foot-eroded rock, was a wonder of light.

And the thing in the centre of the room screamed, a terrible, monstrous sound that tore through this hollow place and left the inferior beings that worshipped it clutching at their heads, trying to block out a sound that shredded the soul.

There was no chanting. No supplication. Only pain for the worshippers of the terrible, awful being.

Long laid patterns... broken! Rituals interrupted! Sacred things blasphemed, flesh mind and body.

If one was to go as far as to assign human emotions to this thing, to anthromorphise it, it would be furious, enraged beyond comprehension and words and thoughts. And if one were to assign thoughts that could be understood by man to it, it would be filled with plots and plans and could-bes and couldn't-bes, for something that it had not predicted had come into play.

In the light of the prismatic shimmers that broke the darkness and blinded the onlookers, that much could be said to be true.

* * *

~'/|\'~


	20. Chapter 19: Procedural Work

**Chapter 19**

**Procedural Work / so afflicted, for a god**

**AEON**

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

_"For us is not permitted the grief of previous societies. Synthetic eyes do not mist over with tears. Drugs enforce 'the natural healing of time'. We are all just chemistry and physics, and by changing the chemistry the transitory illusion of consciousness is made to conform to its fundaments. We are all stardust, in the most brutal and minimalistic style. The pain of a broken heart, of loss and grief is but an illusion of a flawed mind._

And yet it still hurts."

Gendo Ikari  
Personal documents

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**21st of October, 2091**

The shadowless room smelt of hot metal and ozone. Hand on hip, Asuka Langley Soryu stared up at the immobile figure of Unit 02. Construction drones and exosuited technicians swarmed over it, an exoskeleton of scaffolding chaining it down. Crimson plating covered extensive sections of the Evangelion, replacement parts from the extensive damage inflicted by Harbinger-6, and in this saturated environment the bloody red made it look raw and injured.

The girl gripped the railing in front of her, Eyes staring up at the titan. "Come on," she whispered to it. "Get better soon." Sighing, she reached out, almost as if she could stroke her war machine, to comfort it.

Her reverie was disrupted by the clatter of feet behind her, and she stepped out of the way of the technicians moving canisters of fire extinguishing foam. Much as she wanted to be in her Evangelion, to feel the rush of power or even the comforting warmth of a synchronisation test, it was locked down while they replaced elements of the plug interface which had been damaged by the extreme cold it had faced in Chicago-2. There was not even the monotony of tests. On the other hand, though she had been loath to admit it, the fact that she had been off-duty meant that she had been able to take dream-suppressants without it interfering with her synch ratio.

A Harbinger kill under her belt, and a few nights of good, unbroken sleep. No wonder she was feeling good. She would be even better, of course, when she could resume normal training and show the other two Children that she was the natural leader and set a good example for them. The red-blonde girl nodded to herself, and set off toward the control centre. They had probably finished the synch test by now, and that means she might be able to catch some of their training exercise. If she was to be the troop leader, she'd have to find ways for them to improve.

Together, they wouldn't let another city die like that. Chicago-2 and Berlin-2 wouldn't happen again as she watched. She was sure of that.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The plug screen went black, and Shinji leaned back with a groan. That... could have gone better. Considerably better. He sighed and slumped forward, exhaling in the LCL. Before him, he could see the tactical battle map, and Unit 00's icon remained green, although the hordes of hypothetical Harbinger-spawn based off the things that Harbinger-4 had produced painted the area red.

"That wasn't exactly fair," he muttered to himself rebelliously. "If that'd been real, I'd have had my AT-Field. Wouldn't have been able to swarm me then." He paused. "And it wasn't fair putting that weakened dome there. How was I meant to know it couldn't support my weight?" Another pause followed. "Wasn't fair."

The boy drummed his fingers against his seat. A selfish part of him wanted Rei to hurry up and get killed quickly, so he could at least get to the bit where they explained precisely what he had done wrong, but looking at the map that did not seem likely. Red icons flashed and vanished from the map, as Unit 00 strode about. The Harbinger icon appeared, rising from the waters of the cold coastal city which was the battleground; there was the flash of a nuclear weapon and it paused, before Rei engaged it.

Shinji sighed, and waited. The noise of his fingers was muted by the LCL, sounding hollow and reverberating. If this was some form of indirect punishment for getting 'killed' early in the simulation, it was certainly working.

A second flash over the Harbinger, and the icon was gone. Around Shinji, the plug walls faded to display the Evangelion bays. He could see a bit of Unit 00 from here, the Evangelion still lacking one of its hands, but otherwise intact. Unit 01 was in worse condition, and although the plug interface had been repaired fully, the Eva was not cleared for active duty. That did not exempt him from training, though, and so he closed his eyes, and prepared to face the music.

"That was _terrible_, Third Child," a voice which combined amusement and superiority observed.

Oh. Wonderful. He opened his eyes to meet the blue gaze of his loud and arrogant new classmate, flatmate, and co-worker leaning into the camera which should have been showing the Director of Operations. "Misato," he began, appealing to the other woman on the link.

"Yes. Asuka, please don't interrupt," Lieutenant Colonel Misato Katsuragi said, frowning as she nudged Asuka out of the way of the camera. The new rank insignia she wore was a mark of the promotion which had come through in the aftermath of Chicago-2. "Although that was poorly done, Shinji. You haven't been that sloppy for a while."

The boy sighed. "I'm sorry," he apologised.

"Shinji, I don't want you to be sorry," the woman said. "What do you think you did wrong there?"

"I didn't look where I put my feet, and fell through the roof of a weakened underground dome. Then I got swarmed by," he flapped a hand, "bugs. Which I couldn't hold off because this simulator-thing doesn't give me proper AT-field control."

"That's not an excuse," Asuka interrupted again, leaning back into view. "That the simulator didn't give you a defence against it doesn't change the fact that it was a stupid mistake to make in the first place, when you should have been paying attention to your LITAN which..."

"Asuka." The older woman's voice was increasingly warning. Shinji could really wonder how intelligent the Second Child really was, if she couldn't read the signs.

"... gives structural warnings _and _an overview which you _should _have been..."

"Asuka!" The Lt. Colonel's face was like thunder. "Be quiet!" She sighed. "Shinji, we're going to do this again, and just... pay more attention this time, please. Show me that was just bad luck, if you can."

The boy tried not to smirk at where the red-blonde girl had been, and nodded at Misato, trying his best to look enthusiastic and willing. "I'll try my best," he said, with as much earnestness as he could manage.

"Good." Misato paused, staring up at the main screen. "Rei, that was well done on a technical level," she said to the pale girl who had been watching the entire exchange impassively. "Your piloting had adapted well to your increase in synch ratio. However, this time I want you to work in closer coordination with Shinji. You have to work as a team more, and be in a position to aid him if he ends up in trouble again. Do you think you can do that?"

The girl nodded. "Yes," she said, simply. "I am ready to try again."

"Good," the woman said with a nod, cutting the connection. "Captain, handle this test," she told Captain Martello, who with the movement of Unit 02 was now stationed in London-2. "Asuka, we need to talk."

"Colonel Katsuragi?" Asuka asked, stepping away from the screen, trailing behind Misato, a hint of confusion in her voice. "I was just providing some advice. I have much more experience than him and he's undertrained and under..."

"And Asuka," the Lt. Colonel said, frowning, "please don't do that again. It's not your place to make such comments unless I ask for them. I am responsible for handling the pilots, and I don't need you interfering, especially with such negative reinforcement. Even if you do have points to make, tell them to me in private."

The girl boggled, her lips twitching. "But-" barely escaped her lips, before she stopped herself, seeing the expression on the dark-haired woman's face. "I understand," she said, the words slowly extracted from her, straightening up. Her eyes were level with the older woman's. "Will that be all?" she asked, traces of bitter-sweetness escaping into her voice.

The military officer raised one eyebrow. "Asuka," she said, calmly, "please don't take that voice with me."

Blue Eyes glared back at her. "Fine," the teenager said. "I'm going to one of the dry-sims. If that's all-" she bit back on any further comments. "Unless you have different orders," she said, more calmly.

"Don't go and alienate your fellow pilots just because they might not have the experience you do," the Lt. Colonel ordered. "I'm asking you to try to get along," Misato added.

The noise of Asuka's footsteps as she walked off was lost in the noise of the command centre, which redoubled as people tried to look like they had not been distracted by the confrontation. Misato groaned, and pinched the brow of her nose.

"That was a little harsh," Ritsuko commented, leaning back on her chair.

"It was," Misato said, balling up her fists with a sigh. "Damn. The same thing about negative reinforcement could have been said about me, and I shouldn't have done this in public. Damn it. I snapped at her as if she was a junior officer, rather than another Test Pilot, and..." she trailed off. "The Second Child is going to be work to handle."

"I could have told you that already," the blonde said, rooting through a pile of print-outs. "And did. It was on her psyche profile and everything."

"Yes, yes." Misato sighed, hand going unconsciously to smooth down her skirt. "I think it's at least a bit that Shinji is broadly...well, fairly easy-going..."

"That's not how I would describe him."

"... and Rei is Rei," the officer continued, ignoring the interjection. "Asuka's not going to be the same. She's a highly strung perfectionist with exacting standards of everyone around her who's spent almost no time around children her age and who's intolerant of any perceived failure. She could be a real pain. You know, like you."

Ritsuko blinked. "The phrase 'no offence' could have been added to that," she said, mildly. "And you are just quoting her psych-profile at me. I am familiar with it."

"I don't think that phrase was needed," the black-haired woman said, glaring. "Not when you're going to be like that."

"Look," Ristuko said, with an aggrieved sigh, "Misato, are you _still _annoyed I didn't say anything about Kaji being involved as Asuka's guardian"

Misato's eyes narrowed. "Oh no, not that. Not only that."

"And that he was with the GIA?" Ritsuko said tiredly and rolled her eyes.

Misato tapped her foot impatiently.

Ritsuko sighed. "_And _that he'd be taking up a role liaising with us, as part of an anti-Harbinger task force, _and _that he'd be in L2 when he did it..." she paused "Is this about the whole thing with the Navy people?"

Misato crossed her arms. "Harumph," she said quite clearly, glaring at the blonde.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"We're pleased to have you with us," the tight-faced man said, not looking away from the screen. "Your record with the GIA is wonderful, and your experience in similar roles and the recommendations with your file show exactly the competencies we wanted. There a gap for the last two years, which were..."

Kaji smiled, shifting his shoulders. "Asset protection and pre-emptive defence."

"... yes, yes, which seems to have been quiet."

"Mainly," the pony-tailed man said. "Rather more administrative work involved than earlier postings."

The other man snorted. "Yes, I can see that. But that experience is, again, relevant, although I do have to express some concern at your ties to elements of the Ashcroft Foundation." He shrugged. "Well, anyway, we're getting a new TSEAPer today, and I wanted you here, to watch her intro. She's technically very good, but did you get time to look at her file?"

Kaji nodded. "I did," he said, his voice clipped. "Rather lacking in occult expertise, though, of course, her anima-null status is actually an asset in that field."

"That's what I said, too," the other man said, nodding. "Ah, yes, look. She's in the ante-room. Are you wired for this?"

Kaji stroked his chin, clean-shaven for once. "I'd rather watch on monitors," he said. "They haven't finished transferring stuff for me yet, so I'd have to go through set-up for this network and..."

"... yeah, tell me about it," the man said, rolling his eyes. "Okay." His fingers clacked on the keyboard. "Bringing up SecCam feed, set to auto-track her. I..." he dug in one of his desk drawers, "... here's the remote, so you can flick around; I'll be watching on these. I'll want your opinion on her, though; you're one of the secondary observers for her transfer report."

"Oh joy," Kaji said, looking up at the screen. "More paperwork. Everything was better back when it was your team-leader who had to do that sort of thing."

There was a snort from the other man, as they paid attention to the feed.

Agent Mary Anderson squinted at her reflection in the dark glass, and nervously tucked an errant strand of dark brown hair back behind her ear. The _amlaty_took a deep breath, and began to gnaw at a fingernail, before she realised what she was doing, and took the already-fairly-bitten nail out of her mouth. She would like to say that she only did that when she was nervous, but in her line of work that was a pointless statement. The hand went up again, to correct her hair again, and brush non-existent lint from her shoulder, before the intercom buzzed.

[Agent Anderson,] stated the secretarial LAI, [please enter.]

One final deep breath and she was through the door, a fixed smile on her face. It still came as a surprise, just how small the room was. There were six chairs in a semicircle, and one in the centre, evidently for her. Her orange eyes flicked over the individuals, putting her OIS training to use. Three men, all in suits much like hers, and their bearing was such that she guessed they were either OIS or GIA; certainly they were civilians. A woman... Federal Security Bureau, by her reckoning, stiff-backed and with a suitcase sitting by her chair which almost certainly had a compact submachine gun in it. A young looking _sidoca_, even younger than she was; he looked like he was barely out of university. And... _that_woman was clearly military. Short stocky build, that subtle wrongness about her build that meant that she has probably had most of her body replaced with vat-grown and cybernetic parts.

And, Mary Anderson thought, if this was a group which had high-end infantry like that, then this meeting with State Security Task Force on Non-Governmental Organisations (A), informally known as Grigori-A, was going to be much more interesting, in the Chinese sense, than she had thought. Given that what she had already been told, that was more than a little alarming.

"Captain Ori Joyeuse. NEGN, seconded to the GIA," the blocky military woman said, beginning the round of introductions, and pulling herself to her feet. She shook the _amlaty's_ hand, incidentally confirming all of Mary's suspicions. She could _feel_the underskin weave, even underneath the flexible skin of the hands. "And you would be Agent Mary Anderson, our newest TSEAPer?" she asked, pronouncing the woman's name the Nazzadi way.

"Ah, I prefer it to be pronounced 'mair-ee', not 'mar-eye'," Mary corrected her. "It _should_be spelt correctly on the documents; it's an English name, not a Nazzadi one."

The blocky woman looked back down, and winced slightly. "Sorry," Captain Joyeuse apologised. "I've been reading a lot of oldchar documents recently, and I think I autocorrected because... so, Agent Anderson?"

"Yes?" Mary said, preferring to get away from the topic of why she might want to have her name pronounced that way.

"You came recommended to us directly by Deputy Director Echo," interjected an older man, hair shot through with grey. "You've got a master's in neuroscience, consistently excellent evaluations, and four years service, and now that you've taken the needed occult courses, you're pretty much the perfect candidate."

Mary managed to resist the urge to smirk. Mostly.

"We're here to talk to you about the specific part of the Task Force you'll be working with," the captain said. "I head up the field teams, and so, as a TSEAPer, you'll be working directly on subjects we bring in," she added, gesturing to the central chair, and sitting back down herself.

"I understand, ma'am," the _amlaty _said, taking the seat.

"Grigori-A has a very wide-ranging mandate," the oldest man in the room said, his shock of snow-white hair a contrast to his black suit. "As a result, it is broken down into a number of specialist groups. You'll be part of one specific branch, but specialists like you do..." he coughed, "... have a tendency to get passed around, because there are never enough neuroscientists."

Agent Anderson laughed politely. "I'm used to that at the OIS, sir," she said.

The white haired man continued, his expression grimmer, "And there is the other reason that this branch, Sub-Task Force 28, wanted you. You have prior involvement with cases which touched upon their remit and expertise."

The _amlaty _turned a paler shade of grey-brown. "Th-the B-Budapest from a few weeks ago?" she stuttered.

"No. Not directly," Captain Joyeuse said, her eyes narrowing. "This is an investigative sub-task force, primarily. We investigate a particular subset of ENE-worshipping cults."

"I used to be with the Sectarian Cults Division, and work as a liaison, because we have to work closely with them," added the woman from the FSB.

"There are a lot of disparate memeconcepts worshipped and obeyed by illicit cultist groups," the oldest man continued. "Some are classified and known; the pan-Dagonite faiths, the cell-groups linked to the Tibetan POLLEN, and the like; they have dedicated groups from Grigori-A devoted to them. Sub-Task Force 28 has a more general investigative remit."

"Which is?" Mary asked, as a roundabout way of asking him to get to the point.

"Here, you'll be working specifically to investigate and counteract subverted panhuman groups involved with potentially summonable ENEs of Echo-or-greater threat levels." The grey-haired man sighed. "And this is much, much more important these days. We have some evidence which suggests that Chicago-2 was the product of a deliberate summoning, and there is _extreme _concern that perhaps previous Harbinger-designated entities may have been deliberately summoned, though that is not confirmed."

The _amlaty _opened her mouth and closed it again. "Oh," she said in a small voice, as the scale of her new role became quite apparent.

Kaji, watching on the screen, raised one eyebrow. "She's coping better with it than some of the others," he remarked drily. "She even managed a coherent word."

"Oh, to be so innocent again," his companion said, shaking his head.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Asuka Langley Soryu was in a somewhat better mood by the time she had made her way down to the ladies' changing room. Wrath had been vented against simulated Migou, and the euphoric buzz of knowing that she had beaten her own personal record on the Brasilia-A scenario was enough that any residual bad feelings were pretty much gone. And this was only simulator practice, not even proper Evangelion piloting. She might be getting proper rest, Asuka considered, but without the calmness of synchronising with her Evangelion... well, the break with what had been routine for most of her life was disruptive. No wonder she was getting stressed.

The changing room itself was far too large for the two girls – and weeks earlier only one – assigned to it, something more fitted for an entire sports team or the changing rooms at school. The row of shower cubicles that took up one wall had but a single user; all but three of them had plastic sealing them off to prevent damp from getting in. One of them was currently occupied, judging by the noise of running water coming from within.

And that reminded the Second Child of the other thing she had been planning to do in here, beyond getting changed and showered.

"First Child? Rei Ayanami?" Asuka called out, rapping on the cubicle door with her gloved knuckles. "Is that you?" The question was probably silly, but she wanted to make sure. It was not truly necessary; the metallic scent of LCL coming from within was a grating sensation against the back of Asuka's nostrils, providing proof enough of ID.

"I am having a shower," came back the flat response. "Other ones are free; you do not need to wait for me to finish."

"I want to talk."

"We are talking."

Asuka ground her teeth together. "I mean, I want to talk to you about... look, that's not being very helpful. I'm trying to talk to you about something."

The flow of water stopped, and Rei opened the cubical door, dripping wet and naked to stare levelly at Asuka. "I was having a shower," she said, flatly.

The red-headed girl raised her hands up in a mock-guard. "Okay, okay," she said, "you don't need to be like that." She looked the other girl up and down, taking in the snow-white skin and hair broken only by slightly pinker patches of thinner skin around the eyes and lips. The smell of LCL was almost like a saw to the nose this close, but Asuka was entirely used to it. "Look, let's be friends."

Rei stared at her. "Friends?" she echoed.

"Yes. It's convenient, and we're the two girls who are both Evangelion pilots. Since we're going to be doing a lot of things together, it's easier if we're friends. We'll work better together, and from what I've picked up at school, you don't talk to many other people. It'll be good for you."

Rei tilted her head. "You have not made this offer to Pilot Ikari," she said, softly.

Asuka blinked. Rei with wet hair looked rather... un-Rei-like. With the hair a darker grey from the moisture that left it hanging limp down to her shoulders, something about the shape of her face and her jawline was picked out differently. "Well, no," she began. "But..."

"Is it because you were not allowed into the men's changing rooms to interrupt him when he was having a shower?"

The girl in the plug suit opened her mouth. And then closed it again. "Oh, ha ha," she said, through gritted teeth . "I just wanted to talk." It was slightly disconcerting that someone completely naked had managed to get the upper hand in the conversation like that, Asuka felt, but she suppressed the tick of irritation. She was doing this at least in part to show Lt. Colonel Katsuragi that she could be perfectly sociable, and that meant she had to make sacrifices. Otherwise the dark-haired woman would be smug at her, and she couldn't have that. "If you're going to be so..."

"We will be friends," Rei said, from out of the blue. The naked girl leant forwards. "If you wish it to be so," she added. "May I return to my shower, Second Child?"

Asuka flapped a hand at her. "Go ahead," she said, loosening her own suit in preparation to remove it. She was only wearing the underlayer today, and that made it easier to take off – and slightly more comfortable, despite the smart fabrics, she had made clear to the design teams. "Sheesh, someone gets tetchy when people interrupt her washing," she muttered to herself. As she removed her A10 clips and put them back in the case in her changing bag, the door to Rei's shower closed again, and the flow of water began afresh.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Damp-haired and still trying to get water out of his ears, Shinji walked out of the mens' changing room and straight into an auburn-haired woman. His kit bag landed on the ground with a damp thud, and the smooth wall provided no purchase to prevent him from landing heavily on his bottom.

"Ow," he said. She had the solidity and mass he normally only associated with armoured figures. For all that their eyes had been almost level, it was him who was down on the floor, not her. "I need to stop doing that," he said, mostly to himself.

"Oh, no, no," the woman in the NEGN uniform hastened to reassure him, "it's all my fault. Really." She looked to be ethnically Japanese, but her hair colour and something about the shape of her face suggested that there was some ancestry from somewhere else back a generation or so. Her hair was cut in a style which was similar to that which Rei wore; a utilitarian short style, although not so as short as the way one saw female power armour operators wear it. Reaching down, she offered him her hand to help him up; the grip was on the edge of almost being too strong. She pulled him up, into a tight hug, and the boy found himself in an almost-crushing embrace caught between arms with no give in the muscles and a chest which felt almost solid with subdermal plating. "Lieutenant Mana Krishima, NEGN, assigned to Project Daeva," she said, sounding delighted. "Nice to meet you!"

Brain frozen, Shinji blurted out the first thing which came to mind. "Aren't you meant to be our rivals?" he said, blinking.

"Yep," Mana said cheerfully, as she let go of him. "You're Ashcroft's pet project!" she added, smiling broadly.

Right. Shinji's mind whirred. There was something about her which was really disconcerting him. And he spent a fair amount of time in proximity to Rei Ayanami, so he knew about disconcerting. This was a different kind from the type the _sidocy_generated.

Too heavy. The plating and the hardness. Not phased by impact. That slight edge of wrongness about her features. Shinji swallowed, and then felt guilty about doing so. That was him reacting poorly to a heavily enhanced pilot, nothing more.

... well, the lack of a grip on personal space and the too-tight hug and that smile were probably contributing to his discomfort, he had to admit.

"It's nice to meet you too," he said politely, for lack of anything else to say. "Um. I'm sorry, but... um, what are you doing here?"

"Oh, right," the woman said with a shrug. "Your higher ups talked to my higher ups and they did higher up things, and all things together... well, they put me and Dahaca in one of the other prototypes and sent me over here. My one got wrecked in C2, but they said that I'd performed above expectations and so bumped someone else from their one so I could be fitted for it." She smirked. "Man, Yamagishi is going to be pissed at me for taking her ride."

"I see," Shinji said, massaging the back of his head. "Um. Well, hello. I expect I'll end up seeing you in training sims and the like." He licked his lips. There was something odd about the calibration of her Eyes, he thought, but he wasn't quite sure what. The pupils? She wasn't exactly focussed on him, he thought, but wasn't quite sure.

"No doubt," Mana said with a nod.

"Well." The boy blinked. "I don't know if Asuka or Rei are changed yet, but," he looked around, picking up his kit bag, "well, I need to go and talk to Misa... Maj... Colonel Katsuragi, so if you're headed that way..."

"Oh, no," the auburn-haired woman said cheerfully, "I'll go find the other pilots and introduce myself to them. Don't worry," she jangled something from her wrist, "I have clearance and everything to be down here."

"Okay," Shinji said. "It was nice meeting you," he said, with only a hint of hesitation. "I'll probably see you at... some time."

"Yep!" Whistling, the woman stepped around him, heading towards the female changing room. Shinji stepped quickly away, headed for the lifts. It was a little bit shameful to admit it, but he really hoped he wouldn't spend too much time around her. Maybe it was something to do with the edge of oddness about her. Maybe it was the fact that she would be piloting something without an AT-Field, which had already been wrecked in action, and he couldn't see how she could survive. Maybe – heavens forbid – he was just buying into some kind of Ashcroft mentality and feeling ill at ease around an 'outsider'.

Shinji wasn't quite sure which one would be worse.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

And now it was later, and Shinji was slumped in front of the television, flicking through channels. He knew that he really should be doing his homework, as the combination of training and a PsychEval tomorrow meant he would not have time to get much done, but at the moment he didn't really care. He still had to prepare dinner for him and Asuka – and Misato too, because she was still down in the Geocity – and it was getting late, but he just wanted to sit in a wonderful state of apathy.

Frowning, he picked up several beer cans left on the table, and put them in the bin. Honestly, there really was no excuse not to throw them in to be recycled as soon as they were finished, beside sheer laziness. He hoped that Asuka would be less avowedly indolent than Misato. Not that that would be particularly hard. There were old landfill sites with a better sense of cleanliness than Misato.

The boy shook his head at the way that someone who held her position of authority could be so... uncaring about things like that when off duty. He had a strong suspicion that if for some reason she ended up as a general or something, the cleaning staff at top secret military bases would still find discarded rubbish filling up unobserved corners.

Discarded rubbish... that reminded him. "Asuka?" he called out. "Are you still using the nanofac?"

"Yes!" came the instant response. She was doing something in her room; Shinji didn't know what, and he didn't particularly care to find out. It was not that girls' rooms were _terra incognita_; he had mostly been raised by two women. It was that Asuka had threatened him with all sorts of dire consequences if he dared invade her privacy. And dire consequences would take time he could be using to relax to happen, and it was too much effort to argue with that girl.

"Can you hurry up? Please?" he said.

"No!"

Shinji gritted his teeth, and let out a slow breath. "Please? I have to..."

"My stuff all got destroyed in C2, and I need things to have a tolerable standard of existence," she retorted. "You're just wanting something. If it really matters so much to you, go and make it in a public one."

The boy sighed. "Fine," he said, even though he didn't feel that was particularly acceptable. She had been using all the runtime for days, and it was hardly a case of her making 'essentials' by now. He had seen some of the things she was making, and she should have been the one getting them from some public nanofac, not using a home-grade one to – slowly – make all of them.

Gritting his teeth, he sighed, shedding the irritation. Pulling himself to his feet, he made his way over to the kitchen, digging tubs and packages out of the cupboards. "Just so you know," he added, "you're going to have to give it a break for tomorrow. Because we're almost out of noodles and _kuka mansa_... among other things... and you're _welcome _to try to think up another dish, but if you don't want to go out and buy some more... and I'll have a shopping list for you... then it's probably more convenient let me make some food."

There was a pause. Then;

"Fine," Asuka called back, grumpily. "I'm running a bath."

"Thank you so very much for informing me of that," Shinji muttered to himself. Glancing over, he noticed that Pen-Pen's water bowl was empty and refilled it, before going to wash his hands before he began to cut the vegetables.

The sizzle of protein and vegetables was filling the kitchen by the time Misato got home, tramping her way through the front door with heavy steps. "What a day," she announced, loudly. "That man! I cannot _stand _him. Of all the pretentious, smug, annoying, arrogant, braying, foolish, self-righteous," she made her way into the kitchen, "snobbish, irritating, petty, argumentative, bickering," she opened the fridge, recovering a beer and breaking its seal with a hiss, "time-wasting, making-me-stay-too-long..." and any other words in her diatribe were lost as she downed the alcohol.

"Nice to see you, Misato," Shinji said, twisting slightly as he poked at the contents of the wok with a spatula. "Dinner's going to be in about ten or so minutes, just need to..." a pinger went off, "... ah, yes, need to slice the mushrooms, meant to do that earlier, drat..."

"I needed that," Misato muttered to herself, shaking the can optimistically, before leaving it on the side. "That's good, Shiniji. Where's Asuka?"

"She said something about a bath... like, fifteen or so minutes ago, and... Misato, she's _still _taking up nanofac time."

The older woman frowned. She was really reconsidering how wise it had been to have two Children living with her. Not only did it mean that she got dragged into domestic disputes like that – and had to be the villain to one of them when they clashed – but she worried that it might mean she wasn't keeping the right air of professionalism. Could she really both order them around in combat and resolve their bickering?

A little bit of her was concerned that it was just that Asuka was breaking the little routine that she and Shinji had got into.

"I'll talk with her about that," she said, "but Shinji, try to be a bit understanding. It's disruptive to be moved around."

"I know, I know," the boy said, trying to keep half an eye on the wok as the sound of cutting filled the room. He forced half a smile. "I will try."

Misato smiled at him. "'Kay, that's all I ask," she said, going to the fridge again.

Sitting back, the couch creaking comfortably under her, her second beer in hand, Misato heard the scream from the bathroom. She shook her head sadly. Honestly, people just needed to relax sometimes. Why did _things _keep on happening? Rits had made jokes about girls being more work that boys, and her friend would be annoyingly _smug _if she was right again. Rits spent too much time being right anyway. So she would be nice and calm and solve the problem and no-one would have to be smug at anyone else and…

"Misato!" she heard the furious call. "There's... there is a penguin in the bathroom. An albino one with claws and teeth! And I was _trying _to get in the bath!"

The woman frowned. She was sure Asuka had to have encountered Pen-Pen already. Right? It had been days. Could you just... miss a penguin?

"Oh, that's just Pen-Pen," she called back. "He's a lodger. He's an Antarctican Urbanised Penguin. He's very smart. As in, three-year old human smart. Be nice to him; he is an endangered species after all."

"He's not letting me out of the corner!" was the desperate-sounding response. "He's... he's staring at me! Get away from me, you stupid bird! Stop looking at me like_that_. Or I'll make you even more endangered!"

"Oh, that's just because he doesn't have very good eyesight," she called. She could feel Shinji glaring at her.

"Does Pen-Pen do this to everyone he meets?" he hissed at her.

"Um." The woman had to pause. "I'm not sure," she admitted. "I really haven't had flatmates beyond you since I got him." Raising her voice, she continued, "He's almost blind, so he's just getting to recognise you. Just, you know, flap at him with your hands if he's being a pain."

"What, are you stupid?" Asuka bellowed back. "I'm not moving my hands! Get... argh! No! Don't peck my hands, you stupid bird! Misato! You... call that damn thing off! Stop going for my hands, you vicious blind _thing!_"

"Maybe your hands smell of fish?" Misato called back, with a grin. She couldn't have stopped herself for a year's free supply of beer.

There was an inarticulate scream of rage from the bathroom, and with a sigh Misato pulled herself to her feet. She probably should sort this out. Even if she had just got to sit down for just a little bit and...

"Oh," Shinji remarked, drily, "I see the unhelpful-comments-when-Pen-Pen-harasses-people is also something you treat everyone to." Leaning over, he splashed more oil into the pan, frowning at the burnt bits. "And because of this drama, dinner is going to be a bit blackened," he added, in an accusing tone of voice. "Don't worry, I'll try to make the best of it. And you're a terrible person," he added very softly.

"One with very good hearing," she said, with a half-shrug. "Not a small giggle? Not even a titter? You should probably stop being so serious all the time, Shinji."

"You should probably help Asuka," he retorted. "Having a penguin show up when you're naked is _not funny_."

Misato snorted, and started turning red with supressed laughter. "Your t-tone of voice..." she managed, mouth quivering.

"Get away from me, you stupid... Misato! Get... ha!" There was a squark. "Yeah, how do you like a wet towel now, you damn bird! Back off!"

With a deep, calming breath, Misato pulled herself to her feet. She would have to try her very best not to seem too amused at this; at least if she wanted the rest of the evening to be quiet and peaceful and not-stressful. Why couldn't the world be more considerate of her relaxing-time?

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Ryoji Kaji yawned and stretched, massaging his eyelids and feeling the solidity of his harcontacts under the skin. He cracked his knuckles, and pulled himself to his feet, on the search for coffee. He should probably phone Asuka to say that he was going to be very late... wait, no, she didn't live with him anymore. He still wasn't used to that.

When his workload had cleared up a bit, he'd have to see about dinner around at Katsuragi's, to see how she was getting on. And, well... he'd have to wait until Katsuragi calmed down a bit before he did that. She always did have a bit of a temper when surprised, and Rits had mentioned that Katsuragi hadn't known about his involvement. Which was standard protocol and everything, but was still... well, it was something that had to happen, regardless of his personal feelings on the matter.

Cup of black coffee in hand, he made his way back to his new desk. Urgh. He wanted a smoke, but he wasn't letting himself have it. If he took a smoking break now, he'd get home even later, and frankly he'd like to get a proper night's sleep tonight, not something disrupted by keep-awakes in his system. He was going to rely on the natural inefficiency of caffeine, not the wonders of modern pharmaceuticals.

Mechanically, he opened the file with the next set of reports in, and sent them to the printer under the desk. While they printed, he busied himself with sorting the last set and his annotations, and stuck them into the recycler-scanner. Right. That was sixteen of twenty done, which was eighty percent, which was almost done and now he was printing seventeen which meant that he had nearly done eighty-five percent which was _nearly _ninety percent, and then that would mean that he would almost be done even more and...

His idle mental slicing of the workload was interrupted by a cough, and he looked up to see Ori Joyeuse looking down at him, her uniform somewhat crumbled from long wear. "Late night for you too?" she asked.

"Yep," Kaji said, taking a sip of coffee.

"What're you onto?"

Kaji reach down, and bought the print-outs out from the printer. "Recaps of your raids and coverage of various cult groups," he said, wearily. "Just have to get up to speed on everything you've done, and I can't do this at home because of security. Which means late nights."

"I hear you," the woman said, stretching, skin shifting over her subdermal plating. "Cultists and Budapests and ENEs, oh my."

The man sighed. "It's hardly Snake Fist, is it?" he asked, rolling his eyes. "Just paperwork." He shuffled the files. "Still, I prefer hardcopies, myself. There's nothing like being able to flick through when you're doing this kind of boring revision of work. I wonder if this is how characters who only join in sequels feel."

"You know how it is," the woman said unsympathetically. "Clearly, we should threaten to arrest film directors who don't show accurate amounts of internal paperwork in their action films."

"That'd really cut into recruitment rates," Kaji said. "Also, we'd have to recruit more specialists to handle them."

"Certainly would." She snorted. "Of course, I wouldn't mind a look in the minds of most of Buenos Aires and Hollywood, or at the very least throwing them somewhere where they could never be let near a film script again. Anyone... and I mean anyone... who could make 'Bana Night and Day', that one with Ravana Manupoli and Keysha Demares in, is clearly in league with _something _dark and and malevolent."

Kaji sighed, and flicked his eyes down the next page. "Didn't see it."

"Lucky you. It was terrible."

Kaji coughed. "Mmm," he said deliberately, attempting to convey that he was trying to work here rather than discuss cinematography.

"I'll leave you be," Captain Joyeuse said, getting the hint. She paused, as if she was about to say something. "Just speaking generally," she said, "things move pretty quickly here at times, so you probably want to catch up as fast as you can. I'm still going over some of the things from the last big incident myself, and..." she sighed, "... everyone's worked off their feet by extra checks after C2. We've been having multiple raids a week, and... gods, you think _you _have it bad? Try being the one who has to fill in A1-11 Rights Suspension requests."

Kaji made a noncommittal noise, highlighter pen already in hand. Behind him, the door hissed shut again.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

**22nd of October, 2091**

The familiar ceiling of his bedroom was illuminated by the faint blue glow of his clock. Shinji Ikari leaned over, and saw the back-lit announcement that it was past midnight. He groaned. He just couldn't get to sleep.

The slow, rhythmic sound of his breathing was the refrain of his world, as he stared up at the blue-tinged darkness. The fabric of the bed coverings was rough against his feet, and he was too hot, but when he shifted so his feet were exposed they were too cold. He tried keeping one under the covers and one outside, but that just seemed to produce the worst of both worlds. He rolled over onto his left; his arm cramped up. Trying to sleep face down was out of the question.

A wave of cold shivers worked their way up and down his spine. Yes. That was the other reason. He still wasn't sleeping well, after everything with the Harbingers.

And the funny thing was? The things that he remembered, that he dreamed of? They weren't the horrific death count, millions dead in minutes. They weren't the horror of this most recent Harbinger and its over-large maw, or the cracking noise that buildings in an alien sea made, or the faintly seen things that could have only been bodies, frozen where they died. No, the things that crept into his dreams were the little things. The warmth in the Evangelion compared to the cold outside. The feeling of Asuka in front of him and the way her LCL tasted funny. The odd, half-synchronisation that Dr Akagi had said he'd done and how _different _it had felt, as if everything was precisely the wrong way around like a mirror reflection.

Not really that funny, all things considered. It was no fun to wake in a cold sweat feeling like your limbs weren't moving like they should when you tried to reach out.

The boy pulled himself to his feet, and padded out of his room, feet soft against the rugs. The rooms of Misato's apartment were dark, although minimal lighting followed him as the house LAIs tracked his movement. All the light at the edge of vision managed to do was make the shadows more textured, illuminating the world in shades of grey. Opening the bathroom door, he eased it gently shut behind him. As the light level roles, he stared mutely for a moment at the penguin who was lying in the bath, flopped in the water.

"Pen-Pen," he began wearily, before deciding to not say anything.

Wait. He blinked, as something clicked. Why did Misato have a shaving light built into the mirror, anyway? He was pretty sure that was what it was. Unless it was one of those lights women used when putting on make-up. That was a more sensible explanation.

And he was just so tired, if that kind of random thought was coming to mind.

Leaning down over the sink, Shinji splashed his face with warm water. Pale faced, he started at his reflection and the deep bags under his bloodshot eyes. He looked... well, to be quite honest, he looked like a dead man walking. Pouchy and puffy, he might have well been able to be an extra in a zombie movie.

In the quiet house, something moved behind him. He heard it. It was not just the creak of the floor under the pressure of a foot, though he heard it. It was the movement of the air, a shift in pressure. He turned; nothing. Well, nothing save the sleeping penguin in a partly filled bath beside him. And the movement had been further away than that, too, he realised.

He considered calling out. He decided not to. He didn't want to wake anyone. Instead, he moved as silently as he could over to the door, and eased it open. No one there, either.

The boy sighed, which turned into a yawn. There were two other people in the house with him. So what if he heard noises? It was probably one of them. And the house alarms hadn't gone off or anything, so no one had broken in.

Shinji Ikari headed back to bed, settling himself once again under the covers. And as he finally, slowly dropped off to sleep, he thought he heard footsteps and the sound of running water.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

"Look on the plus side, Shinji," Hikary said, in her best reassuring voice. "At least it's Friday today, right? It's almost the weekend."

Face-down on his desk, the boy groaned. It was only his second day back after the normal post-incident counselling and debriefing, and that meant that once again, he had accumulated work. "And that means I have work-catch up and... other things," he said. "It would be nice if a weekend was anything that meant anything for me."

The grey-skinned girl rolled her eyes. "Self-pity. How attractive." There was an awkward pause, and Shinji poked his head up with one eyebrow raised. "Not that I find you attractive, of course... well, not 'of course', but... look, stop feeling so sorry for yourself."

The boy pursed his lips. On one hand, he felt he had a rather good reason for feeling sorry for himself. On the other, well... Hikary was a friend, and rather – cute was probably the best word, especially with those pigtails and freckles – and she was asking him to cheer up. And in a more objective frame of reference if he at least stopped acting as if he was sorry for himself, he would be able to avoid endless attempts to make him feel better about himself.

"You're staring," the _amlaty _said bluntly, stepping to one side. Shinji blinked, and defocused from the middle distance. "Okay, you were actually just zoned out there," Hikary said with a smile.

"Bad night," he said, with a one-shouldered shrug.

The girl sat down, neatly settling her black skirt. "Me too," she admitted. "My older sister came back from a party at about 3am, and her room is next to mine. And she'd... well," a red blush rose under Hikary's mixed skin tone, "... well, I will be having _words _with her, and she will _never _do that again, or Dad will find out that she had someone back. Someone loud back."

"Ah," Shinji said, diplomatically.

"I can't help but wish she'd go and find new accommodation and leave home again," Hikary muttered. "I'm sure she didn't use to do that until she went off to university."

""At least that's one thing I've never had to have," the boy said. "My foster mothers were happily married and their daughters... well, they had them when I was around, so... yeah. No things on that part."

"Oh, I don't know," Reyokhy said, with a flick of her blue-streaked hair. The other girl stepped over to join the conversation, hands clasped behind her back. "I mean, Shinji already managed to bring a girl back." She sniffed, a crisp gesture somewhat ruined by the small smile on her face. "And he picked her up rather than come to my party last weekend."

The boy groaned.

"The best bit," Reyokhy said, in a stage whisper, "is he can't even say that he's not interested in her and I'm just needling him without it making it sound like the new girl is ugly. So, Shinji… I haven't had much of a chance to talk with her… what's she like?"

"Do you mind?" Hikary said, annoyance in her voice.

"Mind what?" Toja interrupted, panting slightly from his dash up the stairs to the homeroom. "Yes, class rep, I know I'm a bit late, but the extra security checks slowed me down from up top and..."

Hikary waved it away. "Nothing, never mind." She quite deliberately turned her back on Reyokhy, shutting out the Hispanic _amlaty_, and her expression softened slightly. "Anyway, Toja, how's your sister doing?"

The boy forced a small smile. "Better," he said. "She still hasn't forgiven me for being in Chicago-2 and making admit that she was worried about me. And..." he slumped down in the desk next to Shinji, shedding his bag with a thud, "... if you laugh... well, you'd better not laugh. But her friends are even more convinced that I'm special, that I'm a hero. Yeah, laugh all you like," he said, as a slight giggle escaped Hikary. "But... urgh. I do _not _need that sort of thing. I'm… I… it's hard, you know. How big it was and how close me and Ken got to… everything." He smiled wryly. "Seems bein' friends with you is dangerous, Shinji. Maybe next time you get a fancy trip, I might have to stay home."

Shinji shook his head. "Next time, I think _I'll _ask to stay home too," he said, sadly. "It wasn't fun for me, either."

"Yeah. Remember Jona?" Toja asked, shifting to include Hikary and Reyokhy.

"Oh yeah, he... he moved to Ostberlin-2, didn't he?" said Reyokhy.

"First." Toja's lips were thin. "I'd occasionally chat with him and he'd got moved to Brasilia-A and then… then Chicago-2. He… he hasn't logged in since then. No profile updates either. And he was… he is normally kinda compulsive about putting every last thing up." The dark-skinned boy trailed off.

There was a silence from the small group. "I'm sorry," Hikary eventually managed. "Well… maybe… maybe he's in hospital. I mean… the news says that there are a lot of people with state sickness, so… so he might be just sick enough to not use the Grid and… and…" She sighed. "Well, there's always hope, right?"

"I guess so," Toja said, slumping down. "Yeah. Makes us look real lucky, doesn't it? I mean, with all the attacks and stuff. I mean, like, if that thing at the end of August had been like what happened at C2, I'd have been dead. It just attacked. Like a thing. Not… not like an entire ocean." He hunched his shoulders. "How do you fight that kind of thing?"

"I can't say anything about that," Shinji blurted out. He could _feel _the eyes on him.

"That is correct," a soft voice said from directly behind him. The boy flinched, whacking his thighs into the underside of the desk. "Ikari is not allowed to talk about that."

"Rei," he said weakly, once he had his breath back. "I wasn't going to… you're really quiet. How long were you there?"

Grey eyes stared back at him. "Some time," she said.

"We should make you wear bells or something," he said. "Can you please not sneak up on me like that?"

"I did not sneak," she said. Was that a slight hint of a smile on her lips, a faintest curling up of the sides of her mouth? "But I'll try, Ikari." She paused. "I wanted to talk with you."

"Oh?" he said, with similar noises of surprise from Reyokhy and Hikary.

"Yes. It is a private matter."

Shinji tried to ignore the look on the faces of the other teenagers. "Okay, I guess. I'm sorry," he apologised to the others, "but… yeah."

"You don't need to ask my permission to talk to people," Hikary said, her mouth twitching. "I'm only the class rep. I don't actually have authority over that sort of thing."

"And it keeps you up at night worrying, doesn't it?" Reyokhy said.

"I'm not _actually _a power-hungry tyrant," the pigtailed girl said wearily. "It's not actually funny. But, yes, ignoring the bad jokers… actually, while you're up, could you see if that new girl – Asuka – and…" she glanced around, "… oh, of _course _Taly is late, why am I not surprised? If you see then dawdling, can you remind them that they're meant to actually attend homeroom?"

"We left at the same time," Shinji said as he got to his feet, shaking his own head. "I don't know where she's got to."

"Soryu is lost and cannot find her locker," Rei said, looking back. She paused, blinking once as she stared at Toja. "And I am sorry about Jona," she said to the _nazzada_, as she left the classroom.

The trio of teenagers stared at the departing pair. "I do not know how he does it," Toja said, eventually. "Him and Rei and…"

Hikary raised her eyebrows. "I know," she said, sounding equally impressed. "Rei is acting… like a normal panhuman around him. I've tried to get through to her for years."

Toja blushed almost imperceptibly. "Yeah, that's where I was going," he muttered. "Nothing more."

"Me too," said Reyokhy. "I tried, but she just... do you think she _likes _him?"

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Scowling, hands thrust into the pockets of her black uniform jacket, Asuka Langley Soryu stalked her way down corridors full of lockers. Each number in turn was examined and glared at for its failings. None of them however were as comprehensive failures as the one which was hers, however, because the one which was _meant_to be hers had refused to open to her access card. And that was just typical. Her second day at this school, and the system had forgotten that she was registered or something. And her call to the IT helpdesk from her PCPU had been utterly useless because apparently it should be working fine.

Which meant that her swipe card had probably failed on her on its second day. Despite working on the doors.

Typical. Just typical. Why was she always surrounded by fools and incompetents?

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

It was cooler out in the corridor. Shinji thrust his hands into his pockets and leaned against the wall. He was not entirely sure what this conversation was about and where it was going to go, in all honesty, and – shamefully – there was a little bit of his brain which would prefer that he was not here at all.

Much like pretty much any conversation with his father, come to think of it. Except the bit of his brain that didn't want to be here would be a rather larger bit. And at least there was no risk that Rei would stick him in a giant cyborg death machine and make him fight alien monstrosities with no training at all.

… of course, he hadn't thought that his father would do that either, right until he did. So maybe that wasn't the best manner in which to judge things.

He settled for saying, "What is it, Rei?"

The girl stared back. Her mouth twitched; once, twice. And then she spoke. "We need to talk, Ikari," she said, voice even softer than usual. "It is necessary."

"Oh, okay." Shinji took a breath. He wasn't sure what this was about, and his eyes skittered to and from her colourless face. "What about?"

She said nothing. Instead, she shrugged her rucksack off and unsealed it, removing something. "Here is another book," she said, proffering a slim book. "I chose one shorter than the last. And older. It is his most famous work, and an important text in its genre."

Shinji blinked, and took the offered gift. "Um. Thank you." He looked down at the cover to avoid that grey gaze. "I'm still not sure if I'll be able to get it read that quickly, but…"

"It is something to do when you cannot do anything to change what happening," Rei said, in a quickfire patter of words. She put her bag back on. "Things happen too quickly. And you cannot do anything right now. Neither can Soryu." Her mouth twitched. "I have not lent her any of my books yet, though."

The boy shifted, leaning against the wall as he turned the book over to read the spine. "You know," he said, scanning the text, "if you want to… um, you know, recommend books to me, you could just link me to them. The Foundation's got us those nice library access accounts."

"I like the way books feel," Rei said, after a moment's pause.

"Fair enough," Shinji said, slightly distracted as he slipped the slim tome into a pocket in his uniform jacket.

"The Second Child asked to be my friend yesterday," Rei said, suddenly. "When I was having a shower." Shinji blushed pinkly, at the memory of Rei and showers. "You don't like her."

Face still red, the boy shifted under that stare. "It's not that I don't like her, exactly," he said uncomfortably. "I hardly know her."

Rei stared at him.

"She's not a person I would choose to live with," he said, to break the silence, "… but I know it's hard to get moved around. Um. I guess maybe she'll feel better when she's made some friends and got used to the Academy… she's... she's probably missing people from… um… I think she said she came from Ostberlin-2 and… um…" he trailed off. That was probably enough sympathy and reason for someone who had been hogging the nanofac for _days _now, a little – somewhat spiteful-sounding – bit of his brain said. "Well, she can be rather rude."

"I see." Rei blinked deeply. "Thank you for explaining, Ikari."

"Um," said Shinji, who didn't really feel that he had explained anything – at least not well. He rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, I guess it's better if we all try to get on, right?"

The girl nodded seriously. "That is what Representative Ikari said," she said. "So I will be her friend if she wants me to be."

The dark-haired boy tapped his fingers against the wall, supressing the flicker of irritation at her casual mention of the quasi-parental role her father seemed to play for her. And… well, he probably owed her to say this. "Rei," he began, "if you don't feel… that is, don't feel too pressured by my… into spending time around Asuka if you don't actually like her. She'll try to push you around and… well…" he trailed off. "I'm sure she'll have plenty of friends so there's no need to make yourself suffer."

He felt terrible under that cold gaze. "Ikari," Rei Ayanami said. "Do not say such things."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Shoulders slumped, a pout locked on her face, the redheaded girl stomped her way up the stairs. Her fingers played out a flat beat against the inner handrail. She was _late _and her locker wasn't _working _and the teacher was probably going to be disapproving at her because of something that wasn't her fault and she'd have to face dumb questions like 'Did you try calling the IT help desk?' and 'Did you try rubbing the card against your jacket?' as if she hadn't done both and… she huffed.

Behind her, she could hear the clatter of heels against the falsewood floor, accompanied by a muttered sequence of words in Nazzadi. From the tone, Asuka strongly suspected it was swearing, but she barely spoke a word of that language. It just refused to register in her brain, compared to the speed at which she had picked up other languages. It was her one self-admitted flaw, even if that self-admission usually was accompanied by comments about how it all sounded the same and how the entire language was obsessed with using overly long words for simple concepts. And as someone who spoke German, that was saying something.

The heels slowed and matched pace with Asuka's feet. "Oh, it's you," a mildly accented voice said, with a distinct current of interest. "Asuka, wasn't it? Shinji's friend."

The Second Child tensed, gritting her teeth. "Not exactly," she said, turning to face the _nazzady _with the short-cropped, puckish black hair streaked with red. "I just happen to…" 'live with him' wouldn't sound right "… be staying at the same place as him." She tried to recall a name, and failed. "Who're you? I've been introduced to so many people over the last few days that…"

The shorter girl shrugged expansively. "No biggie," she said. "Taly," she said, by way of introduction. There was a slightly hungry look in her eyes that Asuka missed entirely as she added, "And from what I've heard, you're down on the same 'environmental studies' thing as Shinji Ikari and Rei Ayanami, right?"

Asuka couldn't help but smirk. "We're on the same Social Work Programme, you mean?" she said, innocently. "Of course, they're… how to put it, slow learners. I'm much better than either of them."

"Oh, really?" the _nazzady _said, leaning in. "I mean, I got a bit of what it involves down there from things that I've picked up, and a bit more from talking with Kensuke…"

"Wait, people willingly talk to him?" the red-blonde girl asked incredulously. "As in, people of the female persuasion?"

Taly scowled. "Oh, great. Yes, let's make fun of that." She flapped a hand. "Oh, I'm just having a horrible day. Don't mind if I'm snappy."

The two of them emerged from the stairwell, heading past a second year class wall presentation on habitat domes. "Me too," Asuka said. "I'm running late, and my card isn't working with my locker, so everything I left there is stuck there and the _useless _help desk isn't helping because they said it's all working properly. On my second day, no less."

"Have you checked you were in the right number block?" the _nazzady _with dyed red streaks in her hair asked. "There's more than one."

Asuka went slightly pink, and scowled. "There are two blocks?"

"Yeah," Taly said. "It's B down there," she said, thumbing down the stairs. "More than two, actually. Each has its own number count going from 000 to… something."

Blue Eyes narrowed. "And they don't think to _number _the two blocks differently," Asuka said flatly. "Oh, wonderful."

The other girl shrugged. "There's four bits. And there's a big letter outside." She snorted. "Yeah, it's dumb. You have to wonder, how much effort would it have been to print the letters on the doors?"

"The world is a very stupid place," Asuka said.

"That about sums it up," Taly agreed. She snarled, slapping the wall. "You know what? I'll totally have an okay excuse for being late if I show you to your locker now, rather than them being dumb about my actually okay other excuse."

"Oh?" asked Asuka, as they clattered down the stairs again, heading in the other direction.

"My dad's _girlfriend_," the contempt was rich in Taly's voice, "who's only around because she's a _kredoneyi sulushiliky_ who's just happened to settle on him rather than anyone else with the least bit of money… well, that blonde cow was yelling at me again this morning so I left early and managed to get almost caught in the lockdown they've got down around Westemere Dome. So I had to detour around that and then got stopped by the way they'd shut down the section of the Second Circle line and…" she sniffed, "well, more raids on _nazzadi _slum housing, is it at all surprising? Of course paranoid old _anfrazzadi _go and arrest us whenever anything at all happens." She caught the slightly bemused look in Asuka's eyes. "Oh, never mind me," Taly said bitterly. "I'm just in a bad mood and all the raids piss me off further. It's never rich human areas which get entire domes locked down just so they can raid a single house, is it?"

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Protocol was quite clear of the order of events to be carried out in such a containment raid.

The first step was to feed all Grid interfacing devices for the target area into a designated watch micromanaged by spook LAIs. Then the spooks got to work in their dumb way, grabbing data feeds from everywhere and everything. Omnipresent security cameras the size of pinholes tracked and monitored every face on the streets. House LAI systems were overridden and the locations and identities of the dwellers noted. The veil of privacy permitted to its citizens by the New Earth Government was torn away completely.

Only then did the barriers come down and the dome end up sealed off from the outside world. Only then did the crowd suppression drones get released from the transports, ready to incapacitate anyone interfering with the raid. Only then did the SP-armoured troopers with their gene-spliced animals silently make their way through doors and drag suspects off to the vans which reverted to their normal blue and white colours after the targets were acquired.

"Fairly clean, this one," remarked one of the handlers to Captain Joyeuse, voice made mechanical by the sealed armour. "Folded at the sight of Bruna, here."

"Yes," the GIA woman said. It was a fairly common response; most people who were half-way sane either froze up or tried to run when faced with something which combined the worst aspects of wolf and tiger, and which weighed a quarter of a tonne even before the armour and the enhancements came into play. "A few tried to resist arrest in number 287, but none of them put up any real fight." She jerked her head over towards where a half-conscious woman in a butter-stained dressing gown was being dragged out, bleeding from the face.

"Kinda wish they didn't do these breakfast time raids," the handler said, patting an armoured hand against the armoured head of the wired-up creature she controlled. "It makes it so hard to tell if someone's going for a knife or cutting bread, and I always feel a little guilty about it."

"Eh," the senior officer said. She looked around the brightly painted tightly packed apartment housing, lips under her helmet curling up slightly at some of the half-conscious black-skinned individuals being dragged out. "Frankly, I'm more bothered that this is another damn thing we have to do. This should be local ArcSec stuff with maybe a single OIS or FSB agent on site. I'm meant to be handling _real _problems, not people who are…" she shrugged, "… well, low level arcane subversives, maybe even only dissidents. We should be up in Stoneleigh, at that _actual _hint of a summoning the Bravo team found, not loaned out as drudgery here."

"Captain…"

"I know, I know, C2 was a big thing and they're cracking down on everything." Ori Joyeuse glared from behind her faceless mask at some of the onlookers who were poking their heads out of doors or from the end of the street. Making a disgusted noise, she opened a communications channel to the crowd control drone operators. "And Rob… we've got peekers. Give them their one warning, and if they don't go inside, give them a burst of the microwave."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

The erratic, near-random walk of the Physical Education lessons through the timetable had bought them to Friday afternoon this week, which was widely agreed to be a good scenario. For one, it meant that it did not sneak up early in the week accompanied with detentions for lack of kit, and for two it meant there was no need to get changed back into their uniforms.

Or at least the boys, who were busy getting muddy on the football pitch could get away with going home like that. The girls who were still on swimming in the cycle were denied that option.

In matching mid-blue swimming costumes, under the watchful eyes of swimming instructors, the teenagers finished their warm-up exercises. Then;

"Soryu," a slightly overweight teacher said, checking the screen held in her hand, "you'll be in the Greens." She tapped the screen, and the smart fabric of the swimming costumes shifted, separating the girls into three colour-groups. "The Yellows are still down one, but it should equal things out a bit."

The red-haired girl bit down a comment that actually, whoever had her had a massively advantage, and merely contented herself with checking out the Yellows and Reds, trying to work out who among them would be her chief rivals. She wasn't quite sure what form of contest was involved, but it was sound sense to prepare.

Plus, she had heard that next term the girls were on martial arts, and she wanted to see if there was anyone who even looked like they might be able to give her a good fight. Her eyes flicked over at Rei, who was looking aesthetically unpleasing in her now-red swimming costume which – and Asuka narrowed her eyes – seemed to be rather tight around the chest.

The German girl puffed up her rather more meagre offering. Well, that was one cost for being in such good shape, she supposed. Her own build was more like a taller version of the Nazzadi girls in the year, without fat to spare. And she knew her genotype didn't put on much weight like that until they had children, which she was not going to do – not ever – which meant that she would just have to content herself with being athletic and slender and lacking in the tummies which certain of her other year-mates might have had.

And with that smug thought, she went to introduce herself further to her fellow Greens. She knew some of them on sight already, as they were in her homeroom, but there were other classes here, half the year in total, and she had never even seen most of them. Good impressions were key, and she was certainly going to make them like her.

Within five minutes, she had found the somewhat disappointing truth. The colour assignations were just a way for them to handle the fact that the year had outgrown the pool. There were no serious points-based contests between teams. She certainly wouldn't get to race that tall, sporty-looking Nazzadi from her homeroom who was in Yellow and looked – in those colours – a bit like a very large wasp. And even though one of the girls in Green had looked enthusiastic at her interest, and suggested that she might want to try out for the school team, that was not something which was an option for Asuka. Getting up for training at 6am was something she could have done, but that would have somewhat clashed with her position as a giant-mecha-piloting champion-of-all-panhumanity.

And now she leant against the large glass-faced wall, staring out at the playing fields. The boys seemed to have more fun. They all got to do things. They didn't have a third of people sitting on the sidelines waiting for a go. The girl shot an annoyed glance at the splashing from the pool, as a row of red-clad girls dove in. Part of her was annoyed at the inelegance of some of those dives. The rest of her was annoyed at being splashed, and so she repositioned herself.

A flash of red and white caught her eye, and she raised a reluctantly impressed eye at Rei Ayanami as she climbed out of the other end of the pool a good few seconds in front of the next girl. She honestly hadn't thought the First Child would be that hydrodynamic. The red-blonde girl smiled to herself. Things weren't fun if your rivals couldn't even compete with you. And the two of them would probably end up relying on each other at some point, and the ability to keep practicing at one thing until she was that good spoke well of Rei's ability to focus on a task. With a quiet nod she decided that she would need to take the other girl swimming in the pool down in the Geocity. They could have a proper race there, and she would certainly be able to show Colonel Katsuragi that she was making the best effort to get on with the other girl.

Pleased with herself, Asuka switched her attention back to the other Green girls. And nearly sighed in annoyance. They were actually staring out of the window, judging up the boys in their tight shirts and short – very short – shorts.

The Second Child paused, and shuffled in to join the observation. It would be a chance to learn names. And who knows; there might even be a boy, maybe even two, who might be worth her attention. None of them would be anywhere as attractive as Kaji, of course; they would be callow and inexperienced, none of them able to grow a dashing set of stubble or be so effortlessly handsome in a scruffy shirt. But there might be some who might be worth _some _watching.

"… actually, I'd say Shinji is pretty cute," a short dark-haired girl remarked, staring at a figure standing around in defence a long way away from the ball. "He's dark, mysterious, and sort of handsome."

"A bit soft… you know, not square-jawed. But have you seen his father… well, of course you have." The Nazzadi girl who had said that nodded, and added, "He's been the VA Man of the Year. He's easy on the eye now, in a sort of _asfety-asfeta_way; but looking at his dad, he has real potential."

Asuka immediately readjusted her evaluation of her peers' taste downwards.

"If you want handsome, there's always Dathan," an _amlaty _with blue streaks in her pinned-up hair and swimming goggles on her forehead said; a remark which produced a glare in her direction from a petite _nazzady_.

"Which one is he?" Asuka asked, making her way into the conversation. "He's… the name's familiar, he's in my homeroom, isn't he?"

The petite Nazzadi nodded, "Yes. Tall, brown-hair… he's playing striker for blue over there, the one with the headband on and…"

"The one who's Jony's boyfriend."

"He is not!" the shorter girl snapped.

"Oh, sure," an unfamiliar girl drawled. "And that's why you trail everywhere after him."

"I don't!" Jony said, her dark skin darkening slightly more. "He just automatically signs me up for anything he wants me to do and…"

"Just leave Jony alone," the class representative of Asuka's homeroom said, her own gaze locked on the playing field. Asuka had eaten lunch with the girl, Hikary, who had been very friendly and who seemed to be quite agreeable. And she hadn't been one of the ones admiring Shinji Ikari, who – for whatever talents he may have had, like a positively freakish synch ratio – was _certainly _not an attractive man like Kaji, and anyone who claimed that was simply wrong. Which meant that Asuka could still value her opinion as a human being.

"Thanks, Hik," Jony muttered, slumping back down. "Urgh. I think Beatriu has the right idea, getting a medical note to get out of this." The grey-skinned girl paled, and bit back upon a profanity. "Bleargh," Hikary said, slumping forward. "I'd forgotten I had an appointment scheduled for now." There was a twist of bitter annoyance on her expression as she clambered up. "Drat, drat, drat, need to go get changed and hurry. Just have to remember that it'll be worth it in the end.

Asuka's eyebrows rose. "Hmm?" she asked, curiously.

The _amlaty _grinned despite her expression. "I'm planning to apply for the arcane studies fast-track programme as a pre-degree gap year," she said. "That means that I have to keep on going to the hospital to be poked and stuck in ADE machines to see if I have the consistent strength in arcanoneural patterns for it to be possible. But if I get in... I get my entire degree paid for, and I'll get fast tracked when I apply for the Foundation after uni." She huffed on the glass. "Just wish it wasn't quite so boring. There has to be a more interesting way to do a soul-scan than going and floating in a tube."

There was muttering which sounded almost exactly like 'There's no need to be so smug about it'.

"I do know about that sort of thing, trust me," Asuka said ignoring the muttering, with heartfelt sympathy. "At least in a normal s… well, there aren't many things duller than floating in a transparent tube for thirty minutes."

Hikary rolled her eyes. "You got to do it in a transparent tube," she said. "I'd like that, fancy Ashcroft equipment. The one down there is just grey walls. At least I'm not claustrophobic, that's all I can say." She shook her head. "Look, I've got to go excuse myself and then rush to get changed. I really don't want to be late," she excused herself.

The _amlaty_'s footsteps diminished, dry feet against wet tiles. "Just so you know," one of the girls said to Asuka, "Hikary's sort of nice enough, but she's smug and she's kind of pushy."

Asuka, who saw no real problem with either smugness or pushiness as long as they were justified – as they were whenever she was doing it – shrugged, glancing out the window again. "Hey," she said, changing the conversation, "they're staring at us."

"The boys?" a dark-skinned girl she half-recognised said. "Yes, they do that. You see, while we are superior beings, fit for them only to worship and they do so freely, they are there for us to judge and…"

Any further expansion on the function of panhuman gender roles was silenced by Jony slapping the girl over the back of the head. "Shh, Enu," she told the brown-eyed girl. "Stop being an idiot. And don't encourage them," she added, without looking.

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

Heels clicking against the floor, Misato made her way to Ritsuko's office. Stepping her way around one of the MAGI Operators, she jinked to avoid a trolley pushed by someone in a labcoat and muttered in annoyance. The Director of Operations for the Evangelion Group was headed to liaise with the Director of Science about complicated technical matters which required negotiation and cooperation, and it was merely coincidence that Misato was bored, so was going to bother Rits and see if she was doing anything more interesting.

Some people might have said that the way she had delegated a good fraction of the more menial bits of her work to Captain Martello was the reason she had newfound free time. It certainly was one of the privileges of rank, but as it stood, she was just killing time before her scheduled meeting with Representative Ikari, so would not have been doing anything productive beforehand. That man liked to keep you waiting in his anteroom anyway, so there was no real point in arriving excessively early.

"Maj... I mean, colonel!" She turned at the clatter of shoes behind her just in time to see Lieutenant Ibuki from the Operators manage to trip over the trolley she had herself avoided, and hit the wall in her efforts to remain upright. "Oh... _drat_," the younger woman managed, as she picked herself up, and one of the technicians snickered.

"Yes?" the older woman could only ask in response.

"Colonel, are you headed to see Dr Akagi?" Maya asked. "I think she's meeting someone at the moment, but I needed to see you anyway and... um. The MAGI have been looking at the remains of Harbinger-5... we're still very back-logged, we have people still diving on Harbinger-4 data, and won't be able to start Harbinger-6 analysis for... well, I'm not sure and..."

"Breathe," the Lt. Colonel ordered her, and the younger woman thankfully gulped down air. Looking around, the black-haired woman noticed an empty office. "Let's do this away from the corridor," she said, "out of peoples' way."

"Oh, very good idea, and... yes." Maya followed Misato into the office, fiddling with a connection lead in her hands. "Okay, right, yes," she said, as the door closed. "Well, firstly, Unit 00 is fully operational and repaired right now, so the efforts have moved onto Unit 01. But… um, Dr Akagi is looking at things to see if she can get things working faster by putting some of the Unit 00 team onto Unit 02 temporarily, and so that's why I need to meet with her and…" Maya trailed off. "But I was talking about the Harbinger data, wasn't I?"

Misato nodded.

"I'm so sorry!" the younger woman apologised. "I've just got off a nine hour MAGI dive so I'm still a bit fried, you know?"

The lieutenant colonel did not know, but she had been advised on the matter, and to her it sounded rather like the uplink phantom feelings she had used to get when she'd been on Hurricanes, before she'd been moved onto Blizzards back in her mecha-jockey days, so she could at least empathise. "It's fine," she said, dismissing it. "Do you need to see a doctor?"

"Nah," Maya said, shaking her head. "I'll be fine after I get some food in me and lie down for a bit. I just need to talk something over with Dr Akagi and then I'm off. And have tomorrow off, too."

The dark-haired woman smiled. "Saturdays are a wonderful thing, aren't they?" she joked. "One of the best things mankind ever came up with.

"It's Saturday tomorrow?" Lieutenant Ibuki said, blinking. "Oh, yes, I suppose it is. I haven't been back home in three days, so I've sort of lost track of days."

Misato stared at her, tilting her head slightly. "Well, in that case, we should probably both go to Rits together. I wouldn't want you to wander off a railing-less high place. Even if there aren't any of them around here," she said, opening the door again as she followed the markers in her Eyes leading her to Ritsuko's office.

"We're off to see the wizard," Maya sang to herself. "Well, the sorcerer-scientist, but that line doesn't scan. Also, Dr Akagi is certainly not a fraud. And I don't think the Geocity is made of emerald."

"If this is leading up to some joke about me having no brain…" Misato said. She paused. No, it almost certainly wasn't, not from this lieutenant. Ritsuko _would _make that sort of joke – and had – but not from Lieutenant Ibuki.

The younger officer stiffened. "Oh, no," she hastened to reassure her superior officer. "No, not at all! I didn't mean that! It was…"

"Calm down, calm down," the dark-haired woman said, slightly worried. "That was a joke. Nothing more."

"Oh." Maya massaged her neck. "Sorry, like I said, I'm still a bit fried. Well, more than a little fried. And before you worried and… um, I should have explained earlier… fried doesn't mean my brain's cooked or anything, it's just an Operator thing and… um, yes, I'm still babbling."

Misato raised an eyebrow. "You know, you're apologising enough that you sound like Shinji," she said.

The younger woman hugged her arms around herself. "The Third Child does that?" she asked, curiously.

"Shinji does," Misato said. She took a left turn, and scratched her right temple as she peaked in through the wall of Ritsuko's office. "Oh, she's talking with someone already and… oh." The last word was said with dead finality.

"Well, I can just head down to the pods and grab a few hours before I come back and…" began Maya.

"It's not someone who matters," the older woman said through gritted teeth as she glared at the unshaven man standing directly behind Dr Akagi, hands on her shoulders. Pressing her face against the glass, she could pick up most of the conversation.

"… and a woman with a mole in the path of her tears is doomed to unhappiness," she heard Kaji say. "Melancholy and tragedy: alas!"

"Mmm," Ritsuko said, stroking his hand, and making her dark-haired watcher exhale in annoyance on the glass. "You always were a handsome rogue, Ryoji. But there is one reason that your seduction is doomed to as much unhappiness as you claim I will be afflicted by."

"Oh?" the man asked, leaning in closer.

"That would be the scary-and-jealous lady up against the window, you handsome man," Ritsuko said softly, barely at the edge of Misato's eavesdropping. "The scary jealous lady who is allowed to carry firearms. When your doom strikes, Ryoji, try not to bleed everywhere. There's electronic equipment in here which won't react well to blood." She patted his hand. "Try to get Misato to take you outside before she maims you."

Damn. She'd been noticed. "I am not jealous," Misato snapped, the sliding door thwarting her strong desire to slam it open. "And I thought you'd have more taste than to fall for the wiles of that rat, Rits!"

"A rat?" Kaji asked, looking hurt.

"Oh, don't try that expression on me," the black-haired woman hissed at her ex. "You can look innocent, but you're a dirty rat who… who…" she jabbed a finger at Ritsuko, "… oh, no, don't you _dare _start giggling, Ritsuko! Don't you dare!"

"I'm not," the blonde scientist said indistinctly, from behind a sheaf of suddenly raised print-outs. "I'm researching."

Misato shot her a disgusted glare. "What are you even doing here?" she snapped at Kaji. "I don't see how your brand new conjured-up-out-of-nowhere role means you're here, distracting my Director of Science when you should be out… out there raiding people and interrogating people and doing other things which do not involve you being here!"

"Paperwork hasn't cleared for active duty yet, fully," he said with a shrug. "It's nice to see you again, Katsuragi. I look forwards to a long and fruitful cooperation against extranormal threats. Do you have something important to say to Ritsuko?"

That was a tricky question, like caltrops in her path, because technically speaking, she had only been coming down here to chat to Ritsuko and see if she was doing anything interesting while she waited for her meeting with Representative Ikari. She rallied valiantly, though.

"I was checking on the progress reports for Units 01 and 02. And then consulted with one of the Operators, and… Kaji, you rat, you're getting in the way of actually productive people working!"

He smiled at her, and metaphorically twinkled, which only deepened her irritation. "Oh well," he said, with a half-shrug. "I'll have to catch up with you two later. It'll be just like old times."

"I hope not," Ritsuko said archly. "I still have my original liver, unlike you two, and it won't be able to cope with student-level drinking anymore."

Ryoji Kaji nodded. "A good point, elegantly made," he said. "Then it will be like old times, except we shall be a group of boring responsible adults. And so as befits my role as a boring responsible adult, I will leave you two to your vitally important work." He waved goodbye as he stepped back, stepping past the wide-eyed Maya. "_Au revoir_, dear ladies."

Misato clenched her fists into balls, and stewed.

"Do you mind?" the blonde said, tartly. "If you're going to rage, please do it outside of my office. I have work to do, and… Maya, is that you? Do you have the latest feeds from the MAGI to go over? I'm sorry, I'm a bit behind today and so haven't had a chance to go over the summary yet, so I might be a bit slow and…"

"Oh, no, no," the younger woman hastened to reassure the scientist. "Trust me, I've only just submitted the summary, so I expected that you wouldn't have had a chance to look over it… and you normally catch up so fast that I can't even notice the difference!"

"Don't let me detain you," Ritsuko raised her eyebrows, at her old friend, who saw herself out.

Cooling her heels in Representative Ikari's anteroom, Misato seethed. Kaji! The cheek showing up like that! And he _had _to go and get himself permanently placed here, didn't he? It was over between them, and it had been for years. There had been other men for her, and she had no doubt that there would have been other women for him. And… she wasn't the woman he had known. At university, it had been before she had joined the army, before the surgeries and the enhancements and the augmentations. It had been before Beijing-1, and it had been before the Fall of China and the Long Retreat.

She wasn't the same person, and she didn't need someone from her past showing up like that, smiling, looking not much different – a few wrinkles at the edge of the eyes, a trace of grey at the temples – as if things hadn't changed. Even if they had departed on good terms, and they hadn't, everything had changed.

The sound of smart shoes against the marble floor was enough to bring Misato to her feet, hand rising in a half-salute before she caught herself. There was something about Representative Ikari which seemed to bring out that response, even if she as a serving officer wasn't really meant to salute a civilian like him who held no formal military or elected position in the New Earth Government. Even if he was through the morass of her technically-complicated current status the one who was responsible for most of her daily orders and who paid the majority of her wage.

"Katsuragi," the man said, staring at her through arglasses without stopping. "Follow me."

Her shoes clattered as she caught up with him. "What is it, Representative?" she asked. "Are we having the meeting somewhere else or…"

"I'm cancelling it," he interrupted, not even looking at her as his strides ate up the distance towards the lift. "New data from UNITY correlates with other of my sources. Harbinger-7 is either already here, or will be very soon. Prepare Unit 00 and that disposable thing from Project Daeva."

The lieutenant colonel let out a slow breath, her mind already whirring, all thought of Ryoji Kaji binned. "Yes, sir," she said, promptly.

"Less than a week," Gendo Ikari said, more to himself than to the dark-haired military officer behind him. "Less than a week after the last one." Cold blue eyes met Misato, the woman almost stumbling into him when he suddenly stopped. "Katsuragi, we _must _do better this time. Unit 01 and Unit 02 are still inoperable. There is no room for failure. None at all."

* * *

~'/|\'~

* * *

In the late evening light, shadows formed and gathered. Like seeping tar, like flowing night they gathered and coalescence. Over gorse and heather they ran, and in their wake was left alteration, mutation and madness.

A susurration sounded over the waters of the north of Scotland, a sound not quite entirely unlike ten thousand flies within an echo chamber, and with each beat of the great noise ripples spread and gathered. Shadows fell upwards like time-reversed rain and noxious puce fumes descended from the clouds which blossomed in stinking necrotic rot.

It was time.

There was a shadow in the world. No. There was not. The world was a shadow. The world was transitory, darkened and all too shallow. And on the shallow world something real, something in this fakery was horrible and ancient and powerful and _there_. A least appendage, a finger of a god, a hair of a great beast… and it was now present in a world which could not contain it.

If it seemed to be a shadow to others, then that was merely a weakness of the mind, of the limited frame of reference of onlookers.

Howling, screaming, the figure which combined wolf, ape, water-rounded statue and beached whale burst from its darkling shadowed reality-womb, and Harbinger-7 sang its fury to the heavens.

* * *

~'/|\'~


End file.
